A Contemporary Western Book Of The Dead

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An Anthology
Edited by Charlotte Rodgers & Lydia Maskell

A Contemporary Western Book of The Dead
An Anthology
Edited by Charlotte Rodgers & Lydia Maskell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-04-6
£15.00 +P&P / US$22+P&P


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‘I was musing on Singapore in all its affluent glory still having shrines for the dead on every street corner during ‘The Festival of the Hungry Ghosts’. Then I was musing on how the socially mobile of modern western society eschew death rites and grieving in the name of ‘holding it together’ and being progressive. I thought of which civilizations are falling and which are rising again, and wondered whether acknowledging death and the ancestors is a vital part of a maintaining personal identity and our place in society. I remember how my grieving father mourned for all the information he had relied on his deceased wife remembering; information which was now lost. I recalled Michael Crichton’s words ‘If you don’t know (your family’s) history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.’

Then I thought maybe someone should write about the cults of the ancestors and death, perhaps an anthology, perhaps cross relate experiences of loss to personal spirituality and magick and history. I know that years of working with the dead in the name of art and spirituality, didn’t prepare me for the death of my mother. What helped me was the advice of someone from a long tradition of working with the ancestors. I think that collecting the experiences of spiritual practitioners in their working with grief and death is part of a living and necessary tradition that will give respect to the dead and strength, identity and support to our own personal spirituality.’

Within this book are rituals, stories, traditions and experiences of magicians’ scholars and artists who work with death. Some of the contributors such as Nema, Mogg Morgan, Louis Martine and Nevill Drury (to name but a few) have helped define contemporary transformative spirituality. Others are less well known but just as learned. As there should be in such a collection there is comedy, anger confrontation and practicality. This anthology is about who we are, and where we come from. It is also about how we change. A Contemporary Western Book of the Dead contains voices and visions that acknowledge our past, feed our present and guide the direction of our future.

Introduction/Charlotte Rodgers
Loved One/Nema
All a Do about Death /Josephine McCarthy
Clans For The Memory / Sarah Grimstone
Learning About Death / Nevill Drury
A Thoughtful Wake / Louis Martinie
Break On Through To The Other Side /Louise Hodgson
Death the Final Frontier / Sue Fox
The Bardo Thodol – Bon Voyage / John Power
You Only Live Twice / Ode bi Tola
On Speaking with the Dead: The Cult of the Dead in Traditional Culture / Michael Clarke
Body / Mishlen Linden
The Great Western Hoax / Ode bi Tola
The Book of Gates: A prose arrangement / Mogg Morgan
Biographies of Contributors

Photographers:
Sue Fox, Ruth Kenyon, Ariadne Spyridonos Xenou (Cover: Gerald Hutton)

A German Stargazer’s Book of Astrology

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Astronomia Teutsch Astronomei 1545
Peter Stockinger
(Translator & Editor)
Sue Ward (Foreword)

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A German Stargazer’s Book of Astrology
Peter Stockinger
Foreword by Sue Ward
Format: Softcover/242 pp.
ISBN: 9781906958596
£14.99/US$22
Subjects: Astrology

A German Stargazer’s Book on Astrology is the first English translation of Astronomia Teutsch Astronomei, published in 1545 in Frankfurt am Main. The original work was one of the earliest astrological textbooks in the vernacular, predating William Lilly’s famous English primer Christian Astrology by over a decade. With this translation, Peter Stockinger offers the English reader an exciting insight into the working methods of a 16th century astrologer living on the cusp of the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. The book contains a detailed introduction by the translator, providing valuable background information and historical context, and is comprehensively annotated throughout.

The translation contains, amongst many others, the following chapters:

· Of the Twelve Signs their Stars and Effects
· Of Pictures of the Heavenly Bodies (Constellations)
· Of the Fixed Stars and their Qualities
· Of the Seven Planets
· Of Eclipses and Comets (Mundane astrology)
· Of the Four Seasons (Weather astrology)
· Claudius Ptolemy’s Perpetual Calendar

 

Aleister Crowley A Modern Master

John S. Moore
(Biography)


Aleister Crowley, A Modern Master
John S. Moore
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: Biography/Aleister Crowley/Magick/Thelema/Philosophy.

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Aleister Crowley’s appeal on the level of popular culture has been well catered for by a number of biographies that have appeared in recent years, but the more intellectual side to him, which is equally fascinating, has not received so much serious treatment.

Crowley, A Modern Master is neither an account of his life, nor a straightforward presentation of his teaching, but an attempt to place him clearly in the context of modern ideas as well as a number of older traditions.

Extracts

Even, or even especially if you have little interest in the occult, Aleister Crowley deserves your attention. He applied his powerful intellect to engage with some of the most pressing issues of his own day, many of which remain as vital as ever. His Magick, and his Thelema, outlandish as they might at first sound, are not just fringe ideas, they offer provocative answers and solutions to many of the urgent questions that still beset us.

His message is meant for all, as he firmly states in the introduction to Magick in Theory and Practice. He challenged received opinion, which responded by cutting him out of serious history. Untangle his ideas from their bizarre sounding setting, and we can see how unjust was his exclusion. Most importantly, while received opinion has somewhat changed its character over the past sixty years it is still powerfully subverted by the life and work of this badly underrated great man.

My object is to make Crowley intelligible in a mainstream context, to bring his creative achievement more into the light of sympathetic attention, render his ideas more accessible, and his religious outlook and experience available. This involves rewriting much recent intellectual history. The object is also to make excuses for him, defending what has been criticised as the more contemptible side of his character. While my main target audience is people who already know about Crowley and are intrigued enough to want to explore the context of his ideas, I am also writing for anyone interested in modern thought who is curious to discover if I really can make a case for his importance.

The plan for this book was first conceived in 1984 as a contribution to the Fontana Modern Masters series. This was a series of paperbacks about the people who supposedly defined modernity, what is most creative and distinctive in the age in which we live in. I felt strongly that Crowley deserved a place among these assorted gurus. It was annoying, reading much of what was taken so seriously and admired, that the writings of this unique genius should be so completely disregarded. Knowing the prejudice against him I didn’t have any serious hope, but sent off a proposal all the same. I was told Crowley was not a suitable subject for inclusion. ‘From a publishing point of view’, I was told, he was ‘simply too different from the other people we have included as subjects’. This was of course to be expected. Ezra Pound, high priest of modernism, had been adamant there should be no place for the Beast, far preferring Crowley’s nemesis, Mussolini. I meant to show that Crowley is not so out of place in such company as is said.

John S. Moore

REVIEW

‘That John Moore thinks Aleister Crowley is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century can be in no doubt after reading what amounts to a 200 pages attempt of a rehabilitation of the great beast.

Moore is the first to admit that his book is a defence of Crowley. ”The object is to make excuses for him”, Moore asserts, ”defending what has been criticized as the more contemptible side of his character.” Moore has no interest in the simple retelling of Crowley’s life and works: pointing out that this has been done many times.Instead he aims to try to put Crowley’s thought, work and behaviour into context. In an attempt to make Crowley ”intelligible”, Moore expends many chapters in highly detailed examination of Crowley’s output. Texts and behaviour are examined in the light of ‘Romanticism’, ‘Protestantism’ and ‘Philosophy’, while what Moore describes as ‘Crowley’s sexual Stalinism’ is given an equally thorough examination.

This is not a book for those with no knowledge of Crowley or his work. John Moore expects that you will have heard of (if not be familiar with) Crowley’s main texts and, after a short but informative description of Crowley’s life, lauches the reader straight into the nitty-gritty.

If you are a devotee of Crowley and can see no wrong in him, or any of his behaviour, you will find this book greatly to your taste. I, for one, however found some of Moore’s rather blithe assertions hard to take. One such was that Crowley’s execrable behaviour towards the women in his life could be glossed over with ”His was an aristocratic path. Sex lives of true aristocrats in all their complexity are not reducible to simple formula for democratic consumption.” I’m afraid that doesn’t quite do it for me. Quibbles aside this is a really thought-provoking take on Crowley as a thinker, ego and possible guru. It highlights his huge creativity and determination to live as he believed he should, no matter the consequences: whether of drug abuse, sexual ‘addiction’, megalomania or accusations of debauchery. Well worth a place in any collection of Crowleyana.’

Pagan Dawn Samhain-Yule 2009

Aleister Crowley MI5

Richard C McNeff
(Occult Fiction)

Aleister Crowley MI5 
Richard McNeff
ISBN: 978-1-914153-02-0
£15.00+p&p / US $22.00+p&p

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Audiobook (auto-narated)

An unsettling encounter with Aleister Crowley in a Soho pub launches Dylan Thomas on an adventure whose first stop is the opening of the Surrealist Exhibition on June 11, 1936. With the Welsh poet is his first editor Victor Neuburg, the Beast’s lapsed apprentice. In the bohemian fleshpots of Fitzrovia and Soho they connect with such luminaries of the period as Nina Hamnett, Augustus John, Tom Driberg, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, as well as Crowley himself. Neuburg confronts the terrifying magick of his youth and something even more menacing — a Crowley orchestrated MI5 plot to avert the abdication. Aleister Crowley MI5 is an exhilarating work of fiction with highly researched fact at its core.

Richard McNeff on Aleister Crowley MI5 from ‘LASHTAL’

From the reviews:

‘McNeff’s book is so different from anything you usually find on a bookshelf that it should perhaps be a compulsory purchase.’ Independent on Sunday

‘Probably the finest modern novel featuring Aleister Crowley.’ Lashtal

‘Aleister Crowley as himself in all his occult and charismatic glory – a manipulative, overbearing, bizarre yet compelling character. Fiction could hardly have invented him: he is a gift of a character to any novelist & Richard McNeff has accepted him, unwrapped the parcel and given him his head.’ Martin Booth, author of A Magick Life

‘A swaggering romp of a novel. Plot by Buchan; characters by Beardsley; setting Art Deco — difficult to better that.’ Wormwood

‘A very clever idea, fleshed out with wit and style and an excellent sense of the times.’ Silverstar

 ‘Full of fascinating nuggets…..Neuburg’s crisis of identity with AC is very well observed.’ — Snoo Wilson:   

Richard C McNeff’s early acquaintance with John Symonds, Crowley’s literary executor and biographer, sparked an interest that developed into the 1977 cult short story ‘Sybarite among the Shadows’. This grew into Aleister Crowley MI5. He is also the author of With Barry Flanagan: Travels through Time and Spain (the Lilliput Press), a memoir which grew out of his experience of curating shows for the sculptor, the Brexit satire, The Dream of Boris, and has written for the Guardian, Fortean Times, and Boulevard Magenta. He lived and worked in Barcelona, the Basque Country, Ibiza and Baku. His current home is in London where he was born.

Aleister Crowley,
Thelemic Magick

USA
ACTM £

Revised Edition

12 October 2022

(was Proceedings of the Oxford Golden Dawn Occult Society Thelemic Symposium)

Mogg Morgan 
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 186992844X
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: Aleister Crowley & Thelema/Magick/Enochian Magick.

Hell of a Guru

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
Aleister Crowley may have died in 1947, but his influence is still very much felt by the magician of the new aeon. The CD soundtrack The Beast Speaks sold 8000 copies since its release in 1993, and the paperback edition of Crowley’s Confessions was number two in Virgin Megastores top ten books. The modern magician is no slavish follower or member of some mind bending cult. Crowley’s watch word was Thelema (The Crowleian pronunciation is Theh-LEE-mah, the accent being on the vowel of the second syllable, Greek speakers say the accent should be on the vowel of the first syllable for it to be pronounced right….ThEH-lee-mah) – which means [free] Will. Those who choose to follow this magical path aim to de-condition themselves, to develop independence of spirit and ultimately to become their very own self. One of the many attractions of Crowley’s type of magick, was this advice to follow one’s own way and create your own life path. You don’t need a priest or a judge to tell you how to act – work it out for yourself.

As part of the process of developing self-knowledge, Crowley advocated the practice of magick. This he defined as ‘the science and art of causing change in conformity with will.’

Thelemic magick can be either a system or an approach to the magick of any tradition, e.g. Hermetic, Ceremonial, even Witchcraft. In Thelema, as in all other styles of magick, there are at least two different types of magical entity – the ‘Masonic’ and the ‘Rosicrucian’. The Masonic tends to be organized into definite hierarchical orders; whereas the Rosicrucian is more freeform, often a mere network of peers. The authors of what follows reflect many of these different styles of Thelemic magick and reading what they say is perhaps the best way to grasp what Thelemic magick is all about.
As part of the process of developing self knowledge, Crowley advocated the practice of Magick. This he defined as ‘the science and art of causing change in conformity with will.’ The history of magick is the history of human beings. Many of the things that are now labelled ‘culture’ began as experiments in ritual and magick viz. drama, music, art, dance, philosophy and poetry etc., etc. Magick has played a role in many key moments of our history, for example during the fourteenth century, it was the philosophy of the Renaissance. In our own time, many modern art movements have been driven by magical ideas, for instance, the first abstract painting was made by the Theosophist Kandinsky. Magick is a valuable and reputable activity to undertake.

Amduat: The Great Awakening

“This is the most erudite, interesting and beautifully produced commentary upon, and ritual use of, an ancient Egyptian text by a modern occultist that I have yet seen.”
-RONALD HUTTON, Professor of History, Bristol University, UK

434pp, large format hardback 8″x10″ (Royal Octavo)
isbn 978-1-914153-04-4 casebound – full colour images $55/£45
isbn 9781914153068 Softcover – standard colour $45/£35
isbn 978-1-914153-05-1 Softcover – monochrome images $35/£25

Choose Amduat Edition

Amduat Choose Edition

For orders outside the USA, AUS, UK & EU, please contact us

The Egyptian Amduat, “Book of the Hidden Chamber”, is a fascinating text from ancient Egypt that describes the journey of the deceased. It tells of a twelve-hour long voyage beyond death through a mysterious realm known as the Duat. Every human being, embarking on this journey, will renew themselves to eventually rise from the dead.
In the decade the author worked on this text, she discovered that the journey, as described in the Amduat, is a voyage of Initiation. During the journey, the old consciousness, symbolised by the Sungod Râ, is dissolved and transformed into the birth and awakening of a renewed consciousness, which is symbolised by the God Khepri. The process is not limited to the post mortem state, for it occurs during life as well. Therefore, not only the deceased, but every living being on earth can embark on the voyage in question.

Today, the Amduat is still a system qualified to heighten our consciousness. The inner Sungod teaches us how to navigate safely and transform the psyche’s destructive forces into constructive powers. This life-changing magical journey is a wake-up call to allow us to see who we really are— divine beings— and to become reborn as our Greater Self.


The book, Amduat: The Great Awakening presents the entire Egyptian system in a unique and interesting blend of academic and esoteric knowledge, intertwined with the author’s personal experience of the system itself. It is also a practical workbook to teach the reader how to embark on the Sun barque, to make the inspiring voyage of inner awakening.

Some Reviews:

“Diana has spent over 10 years reading, absorbing, and seeking to understand the hidden teachings within the ancient writings of one of the Egyptian books of the Afterlife; The Egyptian Amduat. Yes, many books have been written about the journey afterlife, but Diana detected within the Amduat something rarely understood. That the Journey, as described in the Amduat, was not just a way to Passover into the Fields of Osiris…. But also a journey INTO LIFE, an awakening into the full awareness of the Higher Self, its powers, its ability to recognise and use the hidden side of that Self. This book is a very different and demanding presentation of an ancient teaching system. I am proud to promote it for I know how much time, effort and intent have gone into it.” – DOLORES ASHCROFT-NOWICKI founder of the Solar Light Video Club, retired Director of Studies of the Servants of the Light School and the author of over 30 books including The Shining Paths, Illuminations and The Guardians Albion Trilogy.

“This is the most erudite, interesting and beautifully produced commentary upon, and ritual use of, an ancient Egyptian text by a modern occultist that I have yet seen.” -RONALD HUTTON, Professor of History, Bristol University, UK, author of 18 books, including Britain’s Pagan Heritage, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic and The Stations of the Sun: A history of the Ritual Year in Britain.

“For centuries, scholars have puzzled over an obscure hieroglyphic text dating from the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. Referred to as the Amduat, it seems, on the face of it, to be nothing more than the Sun God’s recurring journey through the dark hours of the night. But mystics and even some Egyptologists have long suspected there was more to it than that. And now, thanks to years of scholarly research work by author Diana Kreikamp, a secret has been revealed. The ancient story is not only a cypher for the post mortem journey of Egypt’s Pharaohs but also a sophisticated and deeply complex system of spiritual development. One of supreme importance to the present day. And now, everything you need to practise this extraordinary system is in your hands, backed up by Diana’s personal experience and illustrated by the author herself. This is your guide to an initiatory experience that has been lost for more than three millennia. This is your opportunity to walk the path of Egypt’s Kings.” – HERBIE BRENNAN is a lecturer, a professional writer and the author of 114 books including Death; the Great Mystery of life, Nectanebo and The Secret History of Ancient Egypt.

“Any student of the western esoteric tradition, theurgy, the work of the ancient Egyptian priesthood, or the process of initiation through the Mysteries would benefit from studying this book which presents a fusion of erudite scholarly research and illuminating interpretation of ancient initiatory lore. Symbols, terminology, and complex concepts are discussed by the author in-depth and with clarity of understanding. Diana Kreikamp has succeeded in bringing ancient, key, teachings to life in a way that will be practically useful to students in modern mystery schools.” – DR STEVEN CRITCHLEY, Director of Studies of the Servants of the Light School, wrote his PhD on Thomas Taylor the Platonist (1758-1835) and enjoys writing and teaching internationally.

“Diana Kreikamp has done something very difficult. She has unearthed symbols (and indeed energies) from the very depths of Khem and painted them up onto the walls of our everyday consciousness. Amduat: The Great Awakening shows us how to approach the Great Journey we all will have, and how marvellous it will be. The book is beautiful, packed with imagery that lies deeper than any pharaonic tomb. At every Hour of the journey through the Amduat, there is a new revelation of the sort that makes the reader cry: This is it! This is what I’ve been looking for! As a text, it is far above anything else written by any modern author. Quite simply it is brilliant.” – ALAN RICHARDSON, author of Priestess, The Magical Kabbalah, Al-Khemy, Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune and numerous novels in his local area, especially On Winsley Hill and co-author of The Inner Guide to Egypt.

Preview here:

Angelic Magick

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A Guide to Angelic Beings and how to walk with them
Judith Page
(Preface by Aaron Leitch)


Angelic Magick
A Guide to Angelic Beings and how to walk with them
Judith Page
preface by Aaron Leitch
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-47-3
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: Angelic Magick

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“The visualizations here draw their imagery from classical grimoires and Qabalistic philosophy. Plus, they have a specific and useful goal. Each visualization takes you on a journey into the symbolic realm of an archangel, where you are introduced to the entity’s sigils and symbols and other sacred imagery before encountering the archangel himself. Each visualization builds upon those before it, until the aspirant has been led through the seven circles of heaven and has established a personal link to the archangel that governs each one. At the end, the aspirant will have learned to recognize the images, seals and symbols they will encounter in the Solomonic and other advanced systems of angel summoning.

Such guided visualizations are certainly absent from the medieval texts about angels. So, why should I urge anyone who wishes to work with angels – even Solomonic practitioners – to follow the instructions in this book? Simply put, this book is based upon the same principle I described above: safely establishing first contact. It accomplishes this without resort to the full-fledged summoning ceremonies intended to call the angel down to the physical plane – an advanced practice the grimoires tend to jump into without preamble.

This book even includes simple rituals by which you can submit petitions to the archangels in times of need – and these rituals are not entirely removed from the methods of the grimoires. Therefore, working through the steps outlined in this book can serve as a wonderful bridge between “square one” and the fully adept practices of angelic summoning.”
: From Aaron Leitch’s Preface

Contents
Preface
Introduction
Authors Notes
Practical matters and preparation

Chapters

1 Legend of Luc’ifer
Path to Luc’ifer
2 Legend of Mikh’ael
Path to Mikh’ael
3 Legend of Gabri’el
Path to Gabri’el
4 Legend of Sama’el
Path to Sama’el
5 Legend of Rapha’el
Path to Rapha’el
6 Legend of Zadki’el
Path to Zadki’el
7 Legend of Ana’el
Path to Ana’el
8 Legend of Cassi’el
Path to Cassi’el
9 Legend of Uri’el
Path to Uri’el
10 Legend of Enoch
Path to Enoch & the Watchers
Magical Alphabets
Table of correspondences (Charts for angels and Hours)
Notes on the Seal of Truth
Bibliography

 

Aromagick

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Aromagick: A Scentual Guide to the Kalas and The 8 Colours of Magick

By Diti J Morgan

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Aromatic Oils

A guide to their use in Magick, Healing & Perfumery
Ray Sherwin

Aromatic Oils
A guide to their use in Magick, Healing & Perfumery
Ray Sherwin
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1906958039
£15.00 / US$22.00

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This aromatic and magical memoir comes to you from the pen of well-respected chaos mage and expert on aromatics Ray Sherwin. The contents include A bottle of Patchouli, Hocus-Pocus, Witch Doctors and sorcerers. Ritual Magick for the BBC and a spooky ghost story.  A Rose by any other Name – about pheromones and other human smells.  Essential oils, absolutes and carrier oils. Using essential oils therapeutically, therapeutic index and miscellaneous information. Using Aromatherapy and aromatherapy prodacts at home, and an insight  into some of the author favourite oils. You will also find in this book a further note on health & safety, and data regarding storage and handling of esentials oils. Few tips of how to copy a perfume and two poems of an occult / pagan nature. 

Ayurveda: Medicine of the Gods

Basic Principles of Ayurvedic Medicine

Mogg Morgan

Medicine of the Gods

£15.00/US$22.00 

Format: Softcover/ ISBN: 1869928377 148pp

Subjects: Ayurveda/Indology/Tantra.

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Ayurveda is an Asian medical system which has its beginnings in the sixth century BCE and thrives even to the present day. There was once a celebrated doctor called Caraka who lived in the second century of our era. He was one of the greatest physicians that have ever lived. He recorded the fact that the gods themselves were perplexed by the continued existence of the disease, which was a hindrance to humanity’s progress to enlightenment. These same gods, he says, therefore prepared the way for Ayurveda, which literally means the ‘science of longevity’ to be taught to the human race. Thus the title of this book is Medicine of the Gods.

Praise for first edition:
‘The author’s main purpose, introducing ancient Indian medical theory in a relatively trustworthy manner to the interested general reader in easy language, while at the same time being intellectually challenging, is served well by this book.’
– Rahul Peter Das in Traditional South Asian Medicine Vol 6 2001


‘This book contains virtually everything you could want to know about the Hindu system of Ayurvedic medicine, which began on or about the sixth century BCE and is still thriving today. The history, correspondences or “humours’, and other intriguing aspects of this intricate system are described in easy-to-understand language for those unfamiliar with Ayurveda. There is also a catalogue of ailments and how Ayurveda views each of them, and illness in general. I found this fascinating reading, both as a western herbal practitioner, and as a reader fascinated by how other cultures’
– Reviewed by Cerridwen Connelly in The Pentacle

Baphomet Perfume Oil

The essence of Baphomet restores the balance of our universe.

“Baphomet represents the equilibrium of all living things and beyond. Baphomet consciousness helps us to understand the harmonious balance between humans and mammals, reptilians and fish, humans and beasts, angels and demons, heaven and earth, light and dark, left and right, and to accept the sacred cycle of life and death, the eternal existence.
The blended oils are designed as an opening portal and will awaken the powers of shapeshifting and psychic dreams. It will invoke a sense of being one with nature and promote the feeling of well-being, passion and love.” 

“Baphomet oil is suitable for use on any day of the year, but its essence will resonate with your higher vibrations in the most intense way, on the winter solstice or the full moon.” (Diti Morgan – Aromagick 2023)

10ml bottle of the most unique blend of essential oils that capture the essence of Baphomet.

£25.00 / €30.00 / $35.00

Baphomet Perfume oil UK £25.00

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*USA/AUS/EUR – Spend $75.00 or more and get free shipping


Becoming Magick

New & Revised Magicks for the New Aeon
David Rankine

Becoming Magick / UK / £15.00+p&p

Becoming Magick / USA  / US $22+P&P

Becoming Magick
New & Revised Magicks for the New Aeon
David Rankine
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£15.00 /US $22
Subjects: Magick/Occult


Drawing on over twenty years of magickal work in a variety of systems, this book is a forward-looking manual full of new material and techniques created to push the boundaries of contemporary magick. Inspired by the great magickal traditions of past millennia, Becoming Magick presents new techniques of sigilisation and gematria, as well as a new system of energy magick based on the lunar Kalas, and prime Qabalah, a new system of English gematria.

REVIEWS

In the acknowledgements to this book David Rankine writes:
Ian Read, for being the first person to publish my writings as Jack Dracula in Chaos International.‘It is, therefore, the least we can do to have a gander at Becoming Magick and give you our considered opinion thereon. The system put forward here has something for everyone, all explained in the free and easy way that is one of the few good things about modern literature. The reader is guided through anything and (just about) everything from Maat to Angle and Mantra Webs and from Qabalah to Grant’s take on the Kalas, and it all somehow adds to- gether to make a great whole. There is a fair bit of number working in this book but anyone but the worst idiot (surely not present in the occult world?) should be able to follow this. This book is of particular use to Chaos Magicians because it is formed from ideas and techniques lifted from so many diverse systems. Definitely worth buying.’
– Frank Erpel, Chaos International, 26

‘The author of this new work exploring “magicks for the New Aeon”, is well known on the esoteric scene in Wales and London for his lectures and workshops. He has also been involved with a wide variety of magical groups and he draws on this experience to convey the essence of practical magick in simple terms. The book presents new techniques of visualisation and germatria, as well as a new system of magical working based on lunar symbolism and the Cabbala.’- The Cauldron

‘This book is a wonderful propellant for those who wish to bring that magic with a K into their lives. Having the benefit of knowledge of many systems of magic, from kundalini to kameas and kalas to qabalah, Mr Rankine delivers hard and fast ideas regarding these and a myriad of other subjects…An instructive book, especially for those with pre-knowledge of the author’s chosen subject matter.’- Hyena, Witchcraft & Wicca Magazine, Beltane to Lammas 2005

MORE REVIEWS

‘David Rankine has been practicing magick for 25 years. His book Magick Without Peers was the handbook for his correspondence course on Progressive Witchcraft, a hands on primer. This book continues in the same vein, giving you some further study in some material that Mr. Rankine has developed over and above conventional practices. This book assumes you have some grounding in basic magical practices. It would be a good to have some idea of what the Hebrew alphabet has to do with the Qabalah, and how it works with gematria, or better yet, have an idea of what gematria is. It would also be a good idea to know a little about thought forms, a touch of Magic Squares, advanced mantras, and maybe some basics in the 9 Gates.

From these foundations David Rankine takes us a step further, exposing us to some out of the box thinking on these particular essentials to basic magic practice, and gives us something to ponder and possibly incorporate into our own practices. He also includes some “found” techniques he has devised from his own ponderings and practices, and he explains those rather well. Some topics of interest include The Prime Qabalah, The Kalas, The Mantra of Becoming, Magickal Ingestion, Magick Squares and so much more. There is much to digest here, and I am going to give but a brief overview. The Prime Qabalah is a look at a variation of gematria (Hebrew Numerology) applied to the English alphabet and using the 26 prime numbers. Mr. Rankine has some interesting results, which give one cause for reflection. Well worth checking out.

The Kalas chapter is interesting, being based on the concept given by Kenneth Grant. Mr. Rankine has developed his own 16 Kalas (five elements and eleven Astrological Planets) and gives all the properties and attributions of each. From his explanation of what the Kalas are (cycles of energy), to the explanation of each Kala, he presents us with an extraordinary new working that many will find fascinating. If you work with Kalas, you will want to check this section out. The Mantra of Becoming is a discovery of Mr. Rankine, incorporating a root mantra of Kia with some variations that progress on the magical “ia” and incorporates the next four Hebrew letters: L, M, N, and S. This revelation yields some very interesting analysis from the gematria aspect of the mantra, and Mr. Rankine goes a bit further to show the relationships suggested by the gematria analysis and gives us a very interesting mantra to work with.

Magickal Ingestion I found so basic that I wondered why someone else had not thought of it before. In Egyptian, Heka is magic. It is the spoken word that makes magic manifest. The ancient Egyptians would take a spell, and write it on a piece of papyrus and dissolve it in beer and drink it, imbibing the spell as part of themselves as well as being a working.

Bringing that into the present, writing our working, or sigal, or spell on food, writing our intent on a magical cookie, writing blessings on the cakes for ritual with various methods would be an excellent idea to bring the magic and the magician closer together, as suggested by Mr. Rankine. He gives some ideas, some uses and a whole new insight into “you are what you eat”. Much to ponder here and discover.

Magick Squares are the basis for much of our magical workings, be it talismans or creating sigals for personal work. The squares are based on the astrological information from hundreds of years ago and include Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and the moon. However, since the discovery of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, there has been no one who has updated these squares. Mr. Rankine gives us his version of the squares using the Prime Qabalah and also includes Earth, which seems to have been neglected by the astrologers of the past.

Again, more interesting material to ponder over, chew up, and possibly incorporate into our own magical workings. Note that if you do not understand the material discussed here, it is because this book is not a basic primer, and you are not at fault. This can get to be very deep, covering some more advanced material and concepts that knowledgeable practitioners will understand. I found this to be refreshing, and a bit challenging, as there was material here that went beyond my own basic knowledge.

I love a book that can teach me something new, or send me out looking for the basics so I can kick my own working knowledge up a notch. Mr. Rankine did an excellent job of explaining the concepts he is suggesting, and includes illustrations for much of what he discusses, and but for a few places where I had no working knowledge of what he was discussing, I did follow most of what he wrote. And after a bit of backtracking and research, the material I was not familiar with did fall into place.

The mark of a good teacher is his ability to make the unfamiliar understandable, and Mr. Rankine succeeded. If you are looking for new material for your own practice, if you are looking at what other working magicians are doing and are interested in some new concepts and ideas. If you want to challenge yourself with some new aspects to the magickal practices, then this book will definitely give you something to chew on. Again, this is not a magic 101 book, but is intended for those who have gone beyond that. This book is a wondrous look at another man’s discoveries and practices.’
– Boudica, The Wiccan/Pagan Times


David Rankine – Magician, Esoteric Author & Researcher and a leading authority on grimoires. davidrankine.wordpress.com

Beneath the Pleasure Zones

Featured

Beneath The Pleasure Zones
The Rupture
Paul Green
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-58-9 (ebook 978-1-906958-51-0)
£8.99/US$12.99
Subjects: Fiction/Science-Fiction/Cyberpunk.


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In The Rupture, an oligarch builds a cybernetic virtual reality complex on an ancient site in the middle of a rural neo-pagan community of warlocks, who are also besieged by fundamentalist militias. As a consequence, in The Polyverse the Lobe (aka the internet) generates its own demonic entities, the prankster Quantum Brothers, who create further ordeals for Lucas and the two women in his life Viv and Carla. Theres apocalyptic destruction but also a glimmer of hope…

When Lucas Beardsley blundered into the Qliphothic Forces of the Polyverse, Britain’s reality-consensus was drastically disrupted. Everyday causality was never quite the same again…

Now Londoners escape into the virtual-reality thrills of Pleasure Centres plc, while Borderland villages embrace an eclectic neo-paganism. Meanwhile Fundamentalist militias – Mo-Boys and Heavy Shepherds – battle for overall control.

In the Borderlands, Lucas works desperate magicks to win back his ex-lover Carla. In London traumatised computer wizard Dr Crowe seeks work with Pleasure Centres. For Lombard, CEO of Pleasure Centres, has a manic plan to restore the status quo by using Crowe’s cyber-skills to manipulate the ancient forces of the Borderlands.

‘A profound knowledge of the byways of pagan and magical thinking is integrated with an awareness both of current political trends and new technologies.’
– Tim Pendry

This first volume of Paul Green’s new fiction sequence ends with a bizarre and terrifying climax that defines the world of the sequel –

– BENEATH THE PLEASURE ZONES –THE POLYVERSE

Paul Green’s other work includes the novel The Qliphoth and the poetry collection The Gestaltbunker. His dramas, which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, CBC Radio, RTE Ireland and Resonance FM, have been collected in Babalon and Other Plays – the title piece being his evocation of occult rocket scientist Jack Parsons. Based in Hastings, he has performed at numerous esoteric and literary events.

He is not to be confused with the esteemed psychic biker of the same name, whose fascinating book is also published by Mandrake.

 

Black Magick Perfume Oil

“To those before, to those that came after. To us now, And those beyond.
Seen and unseen here but not here”
The Midnight Club

Black Magick Perfume Oil:

UK £35.00

USA $45.00

Aromagick Book & Black Magick Perfume Oil Deal (UK only) £42.00

*USA/AUS/EUR – Spend $75.00 or more and get free shipping

Kurukulla, is the enchantress, the sorceress of dark magic. She is “the cause of wisdom” and she uses her magnetizing powers to bring conditions favourable to the path to Enlightenment. Kurukulla uses her power to attract, magnetize and mesmerise, to lead us on to the path of transformation and enlightenment. Kurukullas’s magic works on the deeper levels of our subconscious mind. By visualising ourselves as one with Her, and connecting to Her divine essence, we begin to realise our internal beauty. 

Black Magick Perfume Oil is the perfect perfume to tap into Kurukulla, the Black Sorceress qualities. A unique blend of Wormwood which is also sacred to Artemis and Lilith, will raise you to a higher level of psychic awareness and will aid in divination and clairvoyance. Mugwort is closely connected to the planet Venus and is sacred to the Goddesses Artemis & Diana and the Chinese fox spirit Hu Xian. Both Wormwood and Mugwort are considered witch herbs and in most of the literature I found it is said that both plants will support, strengthen and enhance visualisation, psychic abilities and lucid dreaming. As both plants are dedicated to Venus, the embodiment of all queen witches and black sorceresses, their influence on our psyche will be much greater on the equinoxes or solstices which are the ‘in-between’ times; the time of the Witches’ Sabbat. Kurukulla represents the transitional period, where Lalita’s brightness and Kali’s darkness are harmonized. Mimosa is the third ingredient and together with Wormwood, and Mugwort, they forge a visionary lucid dreaming experience which gives us a peek into the mysteries of the spiritual realm. These three oils encourage deep restorative sleep as well as prophetic dreams. The next ingredient in this unique blend is White Lotus which represents mental purity and spiritual perfection. The White Lotus awakens the essence of the primaeval sorcerers that dwell in the realms of dreams. Its golden sunset colour shines through and illuminates our vision. The final ingredient is the most precious Ambergris which is formed from a secretion of the bile duct in the intestines of the sperm whale. Kurukulla’s essence is of the precious Ambergris which comes from the depth of her reality.

*Black Magick Perfume oil is not suitable during pregnancy!

*Might cause irritation







Black Toad

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Alchemy of Body, Spirit, & Stone
Ron Wyman

The Black Toad
Alchemy of Body, Spirit, & Stone
Ron Wyman
ISBN 978-1-906958-84-8
£15.00 / US$25.00

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Get The Black Toad & The Peacock’s Egg for only £20.00 / $30.00

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This book on spiritual alchemy presents an initiate’s undertaking of the internal alchemical process. It is a pathway of vision and illumination; and with particular emphasis placed on the induction of the alchemical dream, this movement becomes a visionary transition and passage.

The practitioner’s psyche moves through the paths of the Opus Magnum, and these paths have a goal—the attainment of the Philosopher’s Stone. It is the internal alchemy that acquires access to the ethereal level of the body, and eventually to the enactment of the alchemical Will.

Ron Wyman is an artist and writer living in London. His writing on alchemy stems from his own experience of the alchemical dream process and its related effects. through his background in philosophy he has brought this into a methodical format for the occult practitioner, or for anyone interested in the transcendental effects of internal alchemy.

Blue Lotus Perfume Oil

The unfolding petals of the Blue Lotus flower suggest the soul’s expansion. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a spiritual promise. When Shiva requested the gift of knowledge from Kali, he embraced the thirst for knowledge that permeates the vast conscious universe. This is the same hunger that drives us to create art, music and life. The hunger that ignites in our hearts the passion to study and learn science, medicine, alchemy, philosophy and magic.

In both Egyptian and Hindu cultures, the Blue Lotus is well known for promoting spiritual growth, healing, balancing and rejuvenation.

The captivating scent of Blue Lotus Absolute essential oil is truly one-of-a-kind. Blending warm, spicy, sweet, and floral notes all at once, the fragrance has a complex intensity that is perfectly balanced with subtle refinement. The Egyptians and Hindus of ancient times believed that such exquisite smells were signs of the divine’s presence – symbols of transformation and rebirth. This theory has been extended to suggest that fragrances can shape our mental and emotional states as well. Upon first inhalation, Blue Lotus evokes a sense of longing for both the past and future; love is not far away. As the aroma fills your senses, they become filled with pure pleasure and appreciation for the physical world’s beauty. And with every breath, an overwhelming sense of euphoria begins to take hold – comforting us like a hug from the Goddess herself.

10ml bottle of pure Blue Lotus essential oil (1ml dilution in grapeseed oil)

Blue Lotus Perfume oil UK £15.00

Blue Lotus Perfume oil USA $20.00 


Books of The Beast

Timothy d’Arch Smith

 


The Books of The Beast
Timothy d’Arch Smith
Format: Softcover
ISBN 9781869928179
£15.00 / US$22.00
Subjects: Aleister Crowley/Crowleyiana/Publishing History/Antiquarian Books/Occult.

USA & AUS $22.00

UK £15.00

Click HERE for Kindle USA edition

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Timothy d’Arch Smith is a well-known bibliographer, reviewer and antiquarian bookseller with a special interest in the by-ways of literature, notably the occult and the curious.

For Aleister Crowley a book was a talisman and their every part right down to colour, dimension, and price was symbolic. He also used magical techniques to gain literary success–thus new editions of Crowley’s writing multiply daily, tantalizing the bibliographer. All the more indispensable is this authoritative guide to his magical first editions.

Timothy d’Arch Smith, widely acknowledged as a leading expert on Crowley and on underground literature, offers several shorter articles on:
*Oxford’s demonologist Montague Summers;
*R A Caton and his Fortune Press;
*Sexual prophet Ralph Chubb;
*Florence Farr;
*The British Library Private Case;
*and Timothy d’Arch Smith.
*For this new edition, he also adds an extra chapter on Crowley.

REVIEWS

”…one could hardly wish for a more stimulating guide…” –The London Magazine

”One of the more immediately striking things about the book is its gentle humour.”- Time Out


The Books of The Beast. Timothy d’Arch Smith. (Mandrake).
The author of this collection of studies of twentieth-century occultists is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, bibliographer and reviewer with a life-long interest in esoterica and erotica. This collection has a bibliography of Crowley that gives the book its title and biographies of the Roman Catholic priest, playwright, schoolmaster, collector of homoerotic pornography, demonologist and closet Satanist, Montague Summers, the eccentric R.A. Caton, who shared Summer’s interest in young boys and was briefly his publisher, Ralph Chubb, writer, artist and pederast who tried to create a new religion based on the worship of a boy-god, and pioneering female occultist Florence Farr of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn. There is also an account of Crowley’s disguised appearance as a character in Anthony Powell’s famous novel A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), one of many he made in fictional works, and a description of the private collection of erotica in the British Library. The book concludes with a fascinating autobiographical epilogue on the author’s adventures in the London occult scene of the 1950s and 1960s. These feature Michael Houghton from the Atlantis Bookshop (compared by the author to Grumpy in Walt Disney’s Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs because of his stature and demeanour!), Crowley’s forgotten biographer and cricket fan Charles Richard Cammel, who died during a Test Match at the Oval (what a way to go!), the writer and biographer Jean Overton Fuller, the Beatles (who attended a witchcraft exhibition organised by the author), and Crowley follower Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Highly recommended.
The Cauldron # 136, May 2010.

Bright from The Well

Northern Tales in The Modern World
Dave Lee

Bright from The Well
Northern Tales in The Modern World
Dave Lee
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1869928841
£15.00/ US$22.00
Subjects: Northern Tradition/Chaos Magick.

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REVIEWS

Attentive readers might have noticed me banging on about the collective & individual fading of memory, & the need to imagine an alternative language to talk about radical social change, entailing a re-memberance, or putting together of scattered parts strewn over a landscape of fragments.

Into my hands recently came a new book by Dave Lee, Bright from the Well – Northern Tales in the Modern World. Mandrake of Oxford (2008). It’s a retelling & reimagining of the creation & social origin myths of the Northern European tradition, including the Völuspá, & Rigsþula (Rig’s Tale). Comprising five short stories & five essays, it’s an odd but compelling read, combining a reworked & updated phenomenology of the myths with vividly told stories set in the contemporary world of would-be sorcerers & Chaos Magic.

Those with a suspicious turn of mind wrongly might detect a whiff of the Thule Society, & the romantic/reactionary projects dreamed up by the likes of W. B. Yeats & D. H. Lawrence, which often resulted in psychosomatic afflictions of the right arm. But Dave Lee is no New Ager, sharing my view that these are people with too many easily acquired beliefs to spend, who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. Think rather of the imaginative legacy & radical engagement of William Blake. Great stuff, ideas sparking off in all directions.
Klaus Bubblehammer, Bubblehammerblog
bubblehammerblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/recommended-reading.html


Bright From The Well
– Northern Tales in the Modern World
by Dave Lee
Review by Akashanath

A common difficulty for magicians moving from one tradition to another is reductio ad nauseum. With little effort, it is easy to nail the symbolism of one’s latest trip onto the pre-existing crucifix of one’s earlier experiences, eventually reducing every opportunity for novelty to a stale repeat of one’s preconceptions. Chaos Magick has often fallen into this trap, its dogma of ‘non-dogmatism’ leading adherents to strip belief-systems to their ‘essentials’, sometimes to the point where they lose much of their beauty and function. At the opposite extreme one can simply be overwhelmed by the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a new world-view, and fail to find a point from which to begin one’s assimilation. The Norse and Saxon myths, with their fragmented, archaic language and almost prehistoric themes, can often evoke this type of response. In his newest book, Dave Lee lithely navigates the pass between these twin peaks, taking time to pause and explore the dilemmas, or muse on them in the form of short fables. People expecting a book about the runes will not be disappointed. Those hoping for further expositions on the subject(s) of Chaos Magick will find plenty of interest. But for me where Bright From The Well comes into its own is as a series of reflections on dilemmas that will be familiar to many 21st century occultists.

For example, Chapter 5 is entitled “The Magician In and Against The World.” It’s essentially an analysis of the twin functions of the magician as anarchist, challenging the false autocracy of consensus reality, and the magician as priest, strengthening social traditions by helping the laity to connect them to their spiritual and cosmic sources. Within his complex analysis, Dave grapples with magicians’ tendencies towards transcendence on the one hand and immanence on the other. This rang loud bells for me; in my magickal quest I have often lurched from mind-bending hedonism to ruthless ascetic austerity and back again, struggling to marry my hungers and drives with some arbitrary construct of ultimate purpose. Dave also concludes that some sort of unification is necessary, describing this in terms of the intermarriage of the Vanir and the Aesir, the two Northern pantheons who exchange hostages somewhere near the beginning of time. Dave’s exegesis interprets the former as gods of immanence and the latter as deities of transcendence and consciousness (though not exclusively so). In a story from Snorri’s Prose Edda, Dave tells us how the Aesir (in the form of Odin) and the Vanir (in the form of Tyr) trick the Fenriswoolf (primal chaos) into allowing itself to be bound, creating the ordered universe that is a necessary precondition for human society and hence both esoteric and exoteric religious practice.

Students of Tantrika may find parallels here, and indeed Dave makes passing reference to the left and right hand paths. In many contemporary Hindu icons the transcendent Shiva is depicted sitting on his mountain, meditating and smoking Ganja, largely disinterested in the world. One myth tells us how the goddess Kali once went on a killing spree. Initially invoked by men seeking support in their war with the demons, Kali has lost sight of her original intention in an orgy of destruction. With all the demons slain, she turns her unstoppable fury on her former allies, slaughtering them with her many arms. Summoned from his mountain, Shiva is intrigued. Lying in front of her with his c**k erect, he looks up, turned on by her warped face and blood-stained body. Gradually her lust for killing turns into a different kind of lust, and the two deities begin to f**k. Separate from one another, they are aimless, functionless. In unity, Siva (transcendence) gains the capacity to manifest in the physical world, while Kali (immanence) transmutes her destructive power to generative.

Some of the other sections completely obviate the need for parallels by speaking directly to the magician’s experience. In Chapter 7, the author recounts a fascinating and credible list of magickal anecdotes spanning over 20 (and perhaps closer to 30?) years of workings, grouped into a rough typology of function. Several chapters take the form of stories, some obviously derived from Nordic originals, others less so. The style is engaging and entertaining, not laboriously educational or annoyingly whimsical, and each is short enough to be knocked off quickly (or omitted altogether) should it not be to the reader’s taste.

As well as re-telling stories from the northern traditions and presenting a novel method of working with the entities described as dwarves, the book contains a complete rune poem in English. Although it probably wouldn’t stand alone as a manual of rune magick, anyone genuinely interested in the subject could probably learn something new. The main strength, for those interested in Nordic traditions, will probably be for those looking for another perspective from which to triangulate dry, historical academic texts on the one hand and the often pedantic dogmatism of modern Odinists on the other. Overall, as the title implies, the collection is refreshing and inspired. Well worth a read!

Bull of Ombos

Set and Egyptian Magick II
Mogg Morgan

The Bull of Ombos
Set & Egyptian Magick II
Mogg Morgan
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781869928872 (2005) 360pp
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Egyptian Magick.

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Naqada is a sleepy little town in Upper Egypt, that gives its name to a crucial period in the prehistory of Egypt. In 1895, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the ‘father’ of Egyptian archaeology, stumbled upon a necropolis, belonging to a very ancient city of several thousand inhabitants. With Petrie’s usual luck, he’d made yet another archaeological find of seismic proportions – not just an ancient city a quarter the size of Ur in Mesopotamia, a rare enough find, but the capital of the earliest state established in Egypt! Petrie’s fateful walk through the desert led him to a lost city, known to the Greeks as Ombos, the Citadel of Seth. Seth, the Hidden God, once ruled in this ancient place before it was abandoned to the sands of the desert. All this forbidden knowledge was quickly reburied in academic libraries, where its stunning magical secrets had lain, largely unrevealed, for more than a century – until now.

This book is for all Egyptophiles as well as anyone with an interest in the archaic roots of magick and the sabbatic craft.

Contents: Gold in the desert / Sethians and Osirians compared / Cannibalism /Temple of Seth / Seth’s Town / Seth as Bull of Ombos / Hathor / The names of Seth / Animals of Seth / Seth – the red ochre god / Seth and Horus / Opening the mouth / Seven / The Boat / Heka & Hekau / Magical activities / Cakes of Light / Magick as use and misuse of the funeral rite / Re-emergence of the Hidden God / Five useful Appendices / Extended bibliography /Glossary

—–
Reviews

“The Bull of Ombos is an important and ground-breaking work. The figure of Set(h) has been of significance within Western magic for quite some time, even if he (it?) has appeared as the more controversial form of Satan. While the Temple of Set and The Storm have pioneered research into Sethian magick, the works of Mogg Morgan stand alone as major contributions to this field. What I find most unique is that they combine the fastidiousness of an Egyptologist with the experience of a modern occultist. Certainly Morgan knows his stuff, from Tantra to the modern O.T.O. from pagan and Left Hand Path magick to the Golden Dawn and traditional folklore and customs, but at the same time he approaches the subject cautiously and with the skills of a scholar even a folklorist.

What he offers in this work is what could be best described as a reconstruction of pre-dynastic Egyptian Sethian beliefs and practices . . . While Petrie’s discovery was of great significance he really didn’t appreciate nor understand it. Due to the unique practices of the “Sethians” he came to conclude they weren’t even Egyptians and hence saw them as some sort of foreign invaders. Due to this and the general ambivalence of Egyptologists to the figure of Seth, Petrie’s work in this field has remained largely untapped by later Egyptologists.

Morgan appreciating the significance of this unique resource with the eyes of a scholar as well as a magician has given us a glimpse of what the worshippers of Seth may have believed and praised. Moreover he shows the significance of these within a modern occult system, in his early work Tankhem: Seth & Egyptian Magick, he discussed how this system may have been originally Tantric in nature and its modern application. His research on the animals of Seth, images and names related to Seth, archaeological finds etc is extremely comprehensive and offers extensive clues which will take many years to fully explore and comprehend.

In Bull of Ombos: Seth and Egyptian Magick Voll II, he gives us quite an extensive intellectual framework for Sethian magick (including lots of source materials and some 78 illustrations) as well as giving us a means to bring the magick of Seth into our lives today. Living Traditions, Australia.

Recommended by The Cauldron #119

”I also want to personally thank you for your work . . . you have contributed to my practice and to my Coven’s rituals.’ – www.cotw.us, a teaching Coven, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Review in ASHÉ
“The publication of a book devoted to the Egyptian deity Seth (aka Set) is a rare enough event even in the rarified halls of academia. The publication of a modern magickal text focusing on Seth is even rarer. Despite the important role Seth played in the history of magick–his frequent appearances in the magical papyri of the Hermetic period–few modern texts have taken a serious look at the enigmatic god. This is not all too surprising, given the short-shrift and a good dose of bad PR both in antiquity and also in the Victorian mis-interpretations of the early Egyptologists. Two other modern texts come immediately to mind: Don Webb’s short treatise Seven Faces of Darkness and Mr. Morgan’s earlier work Tankhem. Mr. Morgan is an amateur Egyptologist who has long maintained and interest in the maligned figure of Seth. The Bull of Ombos begins with the 19th century discovery of an ancient city near Naqada, Egypt. The city proved to be the capital of the earliest Egyptian state. The lost city was known to the Greeks as Ombos, the Citadel of Seth. Once ruled by the Hidden God the site had been left to be swallowed by the sands of the desert–the image of the god transformed through later layers of Egyptian power and politics. As Mr. Morgan notes that most of the knowledge discovered at Ombos was quickly reburied in academic libraries. Bull of Ombos delves into these forbidden areas. Mr. Morgan painstakingly puts together the intricacies of early Sethian worship and the roll the god played in the Egyptians’ daily lives. He does not shy away from analyzing the more disturbing suggestions of previous archeological conclusions–even hints of cannibalism. From the scant clues available, the author has produced a detailed and intricate portrait of Seth that is at the same time very applicable to the modern Sethian. Mr. Morgan also provides retellings of the key Seth-related stories as appendix material–a welcome supplement to the text.”

Bulwer-Lytton

Featured

Occult Personality

John S. Moore

Bulwer-Lytton Occult Personality
John S. Moore
ISBN: 9781906958855, 166pp/bw & full colour illustrations.
£20+p&p / US$26.00+p&p

Click HERE for the UK edition

Click HERE for the USA & Elsewhere

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, once the most successful novelist in the English speaking world, now unfairly neglected and even derided, was also the central figure in the underground culture of magic and the occult. With his esoteric studies he built a reputation for deep learning in the history and philosophy of this alternative tradition, as well as passing for an adept in his own right. His creative influence, especially through his occult fiction, was surprisingly far reaching.

The book sets the achievement of this nineteenth century magus into a large historical context, exploring the intellectual and other influences on him as well as movements he inspired. Some chapters discuss aspects of Bulwer’s life, while some explore people and ideas that influenced him and others those he influenced. His seminal role in several cultural movements has been largely forgotten, not least in his home country. This book offers an often unfamiliar perspective on the Victorian era and hopefully succeeds in provoking some questions about our own times.


With Bulwer as its focus, and employing a wealth of illustrations, it manages to provide a whirlwind tour of much occult and esoteric culture, from Iamblichus to Symbolist art and literature, Theosophy and modern psychedelia.

Watch John Moore’s presentation of Bulwer-Lytton Occult Personality
on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iufOV7EmT0Y&feature=youtu.be

Caliban’s Redemption

Buy in UK & Europe (£10.99 + pp)

Buy in USA ($18+pp)
Elsewhere – use USA button, extra postage if needed will be confirmed later

In this collection of surrealist prose-poetry and Dada versicles, Parry’s alter-ego Caliban muses on queer sexuality and existential seclusion from the perspective of Shakespearean Noir. Moreover, by trying to capture the dark and twisted dwarf’s metaphysical lyrics moment by moment, the author slowly deconstructs himself as a willing prisoner on the magical island of violence and desire. After all, Caliban would claim that neither Browning nor Nietzsche had fully grasped the ethics of redemption, pure transcendence, or romantic passion, which can only be found in an unadulterated selfhood.

One of the few, if not only, works of Gnostic Fantasy in modern times. An “edge” literary movement, re-evaluating received perspectives on classical works and discovering “gnosis”, in the sense of a Knowledge of our human hearts. Beautiful, invigorating and strikingly lucid. Its images need weeks to fully unpack, while its disturbing implications haunt a reader’s unsettled moods’ – Daniele-Hadi Irandost FRSA, founder and curator of TEDxLambeth

‘It is a descent into an underworld and a return as a sweat and semen stained, dirty, ugly, angry and very empowered God’ – Charlotte Rogers, award-winning author of P is for Prostitution

Parry is particularly adept at descriptions of the tenebrous side of life. He paints numerous pictures of darkness and evil in a very persuasive manner’ – Dr Bernard Hoose, former lecturer of Moral Theology at Heythrop College, University of London

‘Parry’s poetry traverses inner worlds reminiscent of those of Lautréamont, Bataille and the demonologist Collin De Plancy’ – Richard Rudgley, author and Channel 4 television presenter

CAMDEN TOWN MURDER

The Life and Death of Emily Dimmock
John Barber

The Camden Town Murder
The Life & Death of Emily Dimmock
John Barber
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781869928919
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: True Crime / Criminology.

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Kindle UK Edition

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“Her throat was cut, from ear to ear; her head almost severed from her body.’

On the morning of September 12th 1907, the body of Emily Dimmock was found in her rented rooms in Camden Town, London. The murderer has never been identified.

EMILY DIMMOCK followed the tragic fate of so many poor working class girls, by working as a domestic servant and then as a prostitute in London’s notorious King’s Cross area.

This is the story of the victim; along with an account of the times in which she lived, and the circumstances surrounding her death. Is this another crime of the imagination? Recent books have seen parallels between The Camden Town Murder, and the Whitechapel killings of Jack the Ripper, and the Peasenhall Mystery of 1902.

In THE CAMDEN TOWN MURDER, John Barber presents the reader with a modern day investigation, analysing and retracing the events with the story’s protagonists, with previously unpublished letters and a new interpretation of the forensic evidence.

This is also a social history and an account of the human condition of the people living in the Victorian and Edwardian eras: the upper classes and their domestic servants, the labouring poor, the ‘fallen women’, the music-halls, the artists, and the demi-monde. All these moving against alternating backgrounds of greys, black and crimson, and enraptured with the vapours of wormwood.

The Author: John Barber is a researcher and writer, whose published works include a collection of absorbing murder mystery novels. His popular and informative website, features books, articles, & gazeteers on the socio-cultural history of Britain and its great metropolis London.
www.johnbarber.com

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REVIEWS
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WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK’s article on THE CAMDEN TOWN MURDER
in THE SUNDAY TIMES
www.waldemar.tv/2007/11/walter-sickert-murderous-monster-or-sly-self-promoter/

Review as featured in the Hertfordshire Mercury

‘Author usurps crime queen’s Ripper theory. A Hertford author has slammed crime writer Patricia Cornwell’s theories on Jack the Ripper in his latest book. John Barber, who is also the town centre manager, has penned The Camden Town Murder and is due to take part in a BBC documentary about the killer. In his book he pours cold water on the American crime queen’s speculation that a girl from Standon was the last victim of the Victorian serial killer. Ms Cornwell spent a fortune trying to prove that prostitute Emily Dimmock was killed by artist William Sickert, whom she believes was the Ripper. But John, 59, who has been researching the circumstances around Emily’s tragic death, claims Ms Cornwell has wasted her time and money. In the chapter entitled ‘Was Emily Dimmock a Ripper Victim?’ he writes: “In attempting to answer this question, one problem springs to mind. Why was there a gap of 19 years between the murder of Mary Kelly [a Ripper victim] and Emily Dimmock?”Surely a serial killer kills and then kills again until he is caught or dies. Rarely do they wait 19 years to strike. Yet this is what Patricia Cornwell would have us believe.”John, who lives on Folly Island, told the Mercury: “Ms Cornwell has got it wrong. It’s highly improbable that Emily was the Ripper’s victim.”Her throat was cut but the Ripper’s trademark was tearing open vital organs and sometimes taking body parts.”Sickert might have been the Ripper but he didn’t kill Emily – you’ll have to read the book to find out who did.”John, who has admitted that his fascination with the Ripper and Emily’s murder became an “obsession”, has been asked to take part in a BBC documentary on Sickert.He will take a film crew around north London and Whitechapel, in the East End, to the key sites of the Ripper attacks and the Camden Town murder. TV prankster Jeremy Beadle has already snapped up a signed copy of the The Camden Town Murder, which is available in Waterstones, Foyles, W H Smith, Barnes & Noble, Tesco and through Amazon. It is published by Mandrake.’

Review as featured in NW1 Magazine the groovy magazine for Camden.

The Camden Town Murder
By John Barber
‘ On the morning of 12 September, 1907, Bert Shaw returned to the lodgings he shared with his 22-year-old partner Emily (‘Phyllis’) Dimmock at 29 St Pauls Road (now Agar Grove). Unable to gain entry, he borrowed a key from his neighbour, opened the door and discovered Emily’s lifeless body lying on the bed. Her throat had been cut almost from ear to ear and her windpipe virtually severed. Her killer has never been found. The background to this gruesome murder, and its very public aftermath, is detailed in a new book, The Camden Town Murder.

Emily, a prostitute, was last seen the previous evening drinking with the principal suspect Robert Wood in what was then the Eagle public house and is now Mac’s Bar on the corner of Royal College Street and Camden Road. Wood was tried at the Old Bailey but, thanks to the efforts of Marshall Hall, England’s finest criminal defence barrister, he was acquitted on the grounds that he could not be placed at the scene of the crime and had an alibi. Although the author argues convincingly that Wood is still the most likely suspect, he does entertain other possibilities.

He has obviously carried out extensive research, and he identifies several other men who could have committed the crime, most notably the artist Walter Sickert, who must have known Emily as they both often frequented the Old Bedford Music Hall (demolished in 1969, now Bedford House, 123-133 Camden High Street), where Sickert used to sketch and paint the performers. Sickert is also suspected by many conspiracy theorists, in particular the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, as having been Jack the Ripper and also having killed Emily, although there appears to be little direct evidence that this was the case. In any event, the modus operandi of Emily’s murder differed significantly from that employed by the Ripper. However, Sickert was apparently deeply upset by her death and embarked on a series of sketches and paintings called the Camden Town Murders, the best known of which – ‘what shall we do for the rent?’ – shows a young woman lying on her bed, in exactly the position in which Emily was found by the police. This painting is on the cover of the book.

Reading about true crime can be an unhealthy pastime, as writers and publishers tend to stress the lurid and sensationalist aspects, motivated no doubt by the public’s morbid interest in such matters, and thereby increase sales. This book, however, is forensic rather than febrile in tone, and dispassionately assesses the evidence for and against the various suspects. It will be of interest to students of crime and also to those seeking an understanding of the morality and underworld of Camden life in the early 20th century.’
– Rab MacWilliam in NW1 Magazine


Article feature in the Camden Gazette

‘Writer believes he has solved century old murder mystery’
nlnews@archant.co.uk
14 March 2007

‘Author John Barber spent years researching the book after growing up opposite the scene of the murder in what is now Agar Grove. Picture: Rob Bourne.

A murdered prostitute, a blood-stained bowl and an artist who cheated the hangman’s noose make up a 100-year-old Camden Town riddle a writer may have finally solved.

The 1907 murder of Emily Dimmock shocked the nation – especially as the murderer was never caught, although some believe that Jack the Ripper was responsible.

BERT Shaw – the partner of victim Emily Dimmock at the time of her death in 1907

Now writer John Barber – who grew up opposite the murder house in modern day Agar Grove and spent years writing The Camden Town Murder – thinks he has got to the bottom of the mystery.

He says a modern day jury would probably have convicted local artist Robert Wood – despite the fact that he was cleared of the crime by a court a century ago.

Mr Barber said: “One hundred years later it is very difficult to be sure, but with all the evidence available I have been able to point the finger at someone. Robert Wood was brilliantly defended at his trial but I think his alibi would have been shown to be false by a modern investigation.”

Mr Barber also hopes the book may bring some peace to the family of the murdered woman’s partner Bert Shaw. He said: “Bert Shaw’s family always talked about the murder in a hushed whisper. It was a dark secret but I think he had nothing to do with it. I hope the book gives a bit of peace to the family.”

Bert Shaw’s distant relation Alan Stanley – now 58 – remembers meeting his great uncle in the 1960s. He said: “In my childhood I vaguely knew there had been some sort of murder in the family. People referred to it without ever explaining what it was all about. I remember the fact that the murderer had washed his hands in a bowl and left blood-stains behind. Uncle Bert was old fashioned and always wore his suit even in the home. He was the first to come across her naked body lying with her throat cut – it must have been horrific. I don’t think anyone in the family ever thought he was the murderer.”

Cauldron of The Gods

A Manual of Celtic Magick
Jan Fries


Cauldron of The Gods
A Manual of Celtic Magick
Jan Fries
Format:Softcover
ISBN:
£24.99/US$40 (including post and packaging.)
Subjects: Celtic Magick/Druidism.


‘If you have only one book on the Celtic past and present, this has to be the one’- The Pentacle

‘Imagine the forest. As darkness falls, the somber beeches disappear in misty twilight and shadows seem to gather under their branches. Far away, the blackbird’s call tells of the coming of the night. The birds cease their singing, silence descends, soon the beasts of the night will make their appearance. Between tangled roots, hidden by nettles and brambles, the earth seems to ripple. A few humps of earth seem to emerge from the ground. They are the last traces of burial mounds, of mounds, which were tall and high 2500 years ago. Many of them have disappeared, hidden by tangled roots of beech and oak, ploughed flat by careless farmers, others again show caved-in tops where grave robbers have looted the central chamber. The locals shun these hills. There are tales that strange fires can be seen glowing on the mounds, and that on spooky nights, great armed warriors arise from their resting places. Then the doors to the deep are thrown open and unwary travelers have to beware of being invited into the halls of the dead and unborn. Here the kings of the deep feast and celebrate, time passes differently and strange treasures may be found. Who knows the nights when the gates are open? Who carries the primrose, the wish-flower, the strange blossom that opens the doors to the hollow hills?’
‘Highly Recommended’ – The Cauldron


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From Pagan Dawn:
Anything by Jan Fries is these days immediately snapped up by most chaos magicians out there, and this one should be no exception. Fries is an expert in his field and his work is always widely explored and well presented. Occasionally, I find his writing style a little patronising towards those fluffy-bunny Pagans amongst us, but come on, we all have to start somewhere. As such, 1 would not recommend this book except for the serious occultist who perhaps has not looked too closely into Celtic magic and who wants to try something a little different. Fries knows that in order to be accomplished you need to know where your magick comes from as much as where you want it to take you, and his historical tracing of Celtic magick is knowledgeable and well-researched. The connections he makes to modern-day techniques and practises are seamless and appear almost effortless, except we know Fries did not get to be the specialist he is without a lot of hard work and extensive study. A must for all serious magical practitioners.

Cauldron of the Gods (Detailed contents)

Welcome to the Nemeton

People of the Mounds
The Mound Journey; Raising the Dead; Worship of the Height

Mysteries of La Tene
Talismans; Dangerous Dead and Unusual Burials; Offerings to the Deep; The Sanctity of Water; Exercise: Into the Deep; Places of Worship; Sacred Groves; Temples of Gaul Exploring Gournay; A Hoard of Trophies; Roquepertuse; Tracing Shadows Through a Maze; Teutates, Esus and Taranis ; A Deity of Horses; Rhiannon and the Morrigan; Lugus; Gods of the Land; Cernunnos; Matrones; Divine Beasts; Head Cults.

Druidic Dreams Druids in the Classical Period; Riddles from Antiquity; The Decline of the Druids; Druids in Legend; Druidic Revival;

Evolution of the Bards
Bards and Druids.

A Confusion of Faiths
A Christian Buried Alive; Bardic Christianity;Book of Taliesin

The Filid of Ireland
The Scholar’s Primer; Exercise: The Unique; Poets and Philosophers; Heritage of Babel; The Poet’s Path; Under a Golden Branch; Celtic Harps; From a Dark Cell Land of the Living.

Three Rays of the Awen
Bardic Frenzy; The Spirit of Prophecy; The Wild Man from the Mountains; Breath of the Awen; The Quest for the Muse; Hanes Taliesin; Three Inspirations of Ogyrven; The Trefoil Sign; Deity of the Poets; Ritual: Bride’s Bed; The Personal Muse.

Taliesin Penbeirdd
Who is the Historical Taliesin? The Mythical Taliesin; Trouble with Maelgwn; Chair of the Bards; Ritual: Chick of the Chair; A Torrent of Questions; Exercise: Riddle Magick; A Question of Identity;

Enchantment
The Fire of Motivation; The Gift of the Nettle; The Rite of Cursing; Bright Blessings; Lorica; Greetings for Sun and Moon; Spells of Healing; Gesture; Nightfears, Evil Eye and Spells of Destruction; Magical Battles;

Tales of Transformation
A Net of Romance; The Stupid One; Oral Tradition; Evolution of Song; The Once and Future King; Exercise: The Time Frame; Exercise: The Cultural Frame; Shaping Reality; Exercise: Your Story; Ritual Story-telling; The Enchantment; Therapeutic Storytelling Therapeutic Functions; Artful Vagueness; Tools for Hallucination; Stories and Self-Hypnosis; Stories as Spirits; Enchanting Others; A Forest Walk.

The Secret Arts
The Frith; Imbas Forosna; Dichetal Di Chennaib; Teinm Laeda; Cetnad; Toghairm The Ever Hungry Cauldron; Cauldrons of the Fili; Cauldron of the Underworld; Arthur’s Quest; Nine British Otherworlds; Books of Fferyllt; The Aeneid; Virgil the Magician; A Rite of Rebirth; Burials in Several Phases; Rites of Dismemberment; Siberian Initiations; The Chodpa Trance; The Cauldron Rite; Cauldrons of Creativity; The Hedge of Mist .

Trees of Eternity
The Battle of the Trees; Ogham Trees; Origins of Ogham; Tree Magic; A Tree Companion; A Hand Full of Forests; The Matrix of Nemetona;

Coda: The bed of Taliesin

Appendix
A rough time table regarding events mentioned in this book; Bibliography; Index

Part of ironage ringwall from the Taunus, Jan’s drawing from ‘Helrunar’. I remember climbing this with Jan during my initiation into the mysteries of the forest. – Mogg

Celestial Arcana

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Precession, Tarot & The Secret Doctrine
Titus Salmon

UK Editions
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Celestial Arcana
Precession, Tarot & The Secret Doctrine
Titus Salmon
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-906958-80-0

 

Subjects: Cosmology/Astrology/Tarot/Divination/Occult/Theosophy

This book is an in-depth study of Tarot symbolism, with a particular emphasis on the various myths encoded within, and how they relate to the phenomenon of precession, and the Secret Doctrine of Aeonic succession. Much of the symbolism is shown to have been derived from ancient Egyptian, Celtic, Hellenistic, and medieval customs, rituals, and myths. One of the main theses developed within the book is that the ultimate source of the symbolism is preeminently Egyptian, and can be traced at least as far back to the Age of Taurus (c. 4200-2100 BCE).

The annual flooding of the Nile River, and its connection to the star Sirius was of paramount importance during this era, and it is demonstrated how much of the mythology and symbolism of later Ages and cultures are actually derivations from this fundamental mythos – in which the Mother Goddess was revered rather than vilified, as the case has subsequently become during the Ages of Aries and Pisces. For example, it is postulated that the Biblical account of the Fall of Humanity can be interpreted as a record in astromythological form of the usurpation of the ancient stellar and matriarchal cosmology – in which the Great Mother was preeminent – by the solar and patriarchal regime in which Jehovah became the central deity. Although it is undeniable that our current Age is characterized by many aspects of a bellicose patriarchy, it is suggested that this is a regime losing its foothold, to be supplanted in the (relatively) near future with a more egalitarian cosmology.

The ancient Egyptians were quite aware of the phenomenon of precession well before it was “discovered” by Greek astronomer Hipparchus during the Hellenistic era. In fact, Plato recounts how the Egyptian priests of the 7th century BCE maintained that they had knowledge of multiple precessional cycles (each one comprising 24-26,000 years; i.e. the Great Year), and the concomitant periodic destruction of humanity through various celestial cataclysms – from which they were invariably saved due to their proximity to the Nile. This cycle is shown to have been recognized by ancient Hindu cosmologists, leading to their development of the concept of Yugas – wherein each Yuga represents a portion of the Great Year, with its own celestial characteristics that determine the relative level of spiritual advancement of humanity as a whole. This in part constitutes the so-called “Secret Doctrine” of Aeonic succession throughout the course of the Great Year.

The structural components of the celestial sphere are shown to be keys to unlocking much of the symbolism behind various esoteric constructs and symbols, such as the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Yggdrasil, the Enneagram, the Great Seal, and the Porta Alchemica. These keys are then applied to the Major Arcana in a multifaceted approach that considers astromythology, equinoctial precession, and ancient modes of chronometry in the examination of trump attributions.

Previous systems are discussed, drawing from various historical sources, such as Arthur Waite, Aleister Crowley, A. E. Thierens, Eliphas Levi, and Antoine Court de Gebelin. The tradition of ascribing a Hebraic letter to each of the 22 trumps is also addressed, and a new system is proposed. This system interprets the threefold categorization of the Hebraic alphabet into the “3 mothers”, “7 doubles”, and “12 simples”, according to the celestial mechanism of precession.

The work of Gerald Massey is drawn from throughout the book. Massey was considered to be a self-initiate into the “Secret Doctrine” by H. P. Blavatsky, and Crowley listed him as one of the Chiefs of the “Argentium Astrum”. Much that is obscure in Crowley’s Tarot doctrine is clarified via reference to Massey’s extensive writings on the astromythology of the ancient Egyptians.

The book is illustrated with over 270 images consisting of tables, diagrams, and pictures. Also included is a thorough bibliography and index; references include over 680 footnotes. Total word count = 103,623 (402 pages).

Celtic Chess

W.B. Yeats’s Celtic Enochian Chess

(Enochian Chess Series Vol. III)

Steve Nichols

Celtic Chess: W.B. Yeats’s Celtic Enochian Chess
Enochian Chess Series Vol.III
Steve Nichols
– over 100 illustrations many in colour.
ISBN:
978-1906958947
US$39.99 / UK£30.00

Click Here for Celtic Chess: W.B.Yeats’s Celtic Enochian Chess / UK

Click Here for Celtic Chess: W.B.Yeats’s Celtic Chess / USA & Elsewhere

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only £70.00 free postage / UK

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only $90.00 free postage USA

Elsewhere write for details

W.B. Yeats’s Celtic Enochian Chess  

A black imitation-leather, gold unpublished notebook dated December 1898, shows us the Yeats-Gonne-Pollexfen team at work. Virginia Moore transcribes in 1954 this record of these three Celtic Twilight magicians exploring the four fabled “Cities,” of Falias, Murius, Findias, and Gorias –  regions of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire –  under their respective Gods (the Dagda, Danu, Brigid, and Lugh) and High Druids.  

On questioning the four Druids, Maud Gonne discovered she and Yeats had received the Initiation of the Cauldron (purification/water). Gonne also received the Initiation of the Stone (earth); whereas Yeats had attracted the powers of the Wand (air) signifying supernatural inspiration. Beyond these Elemental Initiations came that of the White Globe, governed by the elder-god Elathan (front cover). Yeats and Pollexfen went – or thought they went –  with help of talismans to Falias, wherein a rough stone house George saw a skeleton of gold with diamond teeth. Next, they went to Murias (water), where a Druid showed them a bath full of indolent bathers. Trips continued to Findias (air), and Gorias (fire), where Pollexfen saw the lower part of the fire God Aengus (“passive form of Lug”). 

This amazing sixteen board sub-elemental extension to the Golden Dawn Enochian Chess system was the culmination of such endeavours by W.B. Yeats and his circle. Full board designs, details of talismanic constructions, suggested pieces, and my account of Yeats’s magickal feud with McGregor Mathers, is published here – much for the first time.   

CHAOTOPIA!

Dave Lee

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Chaotopia!
Dave Lee
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£15.00 / US$26
Subjects: Chaos Magick


‘Once one is fairly competent at practical sorcery, there is little of importance that remains to be said or read about the subject; the magician at this point tends to emphasize inner development in his work. It seems to me that Chaos Magic itself has reached this point; the basic ideas needed for anyone to construct his or her own system of sorcery and to hone their skills are already covered by the available books. What has been lacking so far, is a Chaos magical approach to the investigation of the ecstatic states that underlie magical gnosis. This book, rather than trying to provide yet another slightly different flavour of Chaos technique, takes as its starting point the relationship between ecstasy and magic; between Chaos Magic and Chaos Mysticism, if you like.’ from Chaotopia! page 8

Chaotopia! is neither Utopia nor its opposite. It is what Austin Osman Spare called ‘the chaos of the normal’, seen through an illuminated eye, the eye of the sorcerer.


Chaotopia! includes updates and evaluations of techniques in Chaos Magick and an exploration of ecstatic states in relation to both magick and mysticism.

Also chapters on:
Wealth Magick/Conflict and Exorcism/Sex Magick/Body Alchemy and Healing/Magick and Physics/Chaos Illumination/Spirits/Aeonics

Praise for Dave Lee’s Chaotopia!
‘A highly intelligent book by a leading Chaos Magician which will broaden and deepen Chaoist debate, theory and practice.’
– Peter J. Carroll

MORE REVIEWS

”Chaos magic has come magician and NLP maven Lee. This is not a primer or grimoire; instead, the book puts chaos magic in its conceptual context, explaining the theoretical and metaphysical vistas which have underscored the art’s development since its inception under the asgis of the late, great Austin Osman Spare.

It allows us to see chaos magic äs a form of autonomous mysticism; not so much a syncretic exercise in cosmic tourism äs a balancing attempt to make sense of what arrives in one’s head. This makes it more democratic than the intimidating acolytism of learned magic in the European tradition. Chaos magic rests on the principle that the practitioner can apply belief at will, rather than surrendering to any particular paradigm (thus the slightly wrenched meaning of ‘paradigm stuft’ in chaos practice). It also assumes that altered states permit a powerfui interaction with one’s own centres of power, and äs a result, chaos magicians experiment with psychotropic techniques, including drug use, meditation, hyperventilation and extreme exercise.

Lee shows us the intellectual underpinnings of a practical System, without rendering the art, or his discourse on it, abstract or arch. He sets out the theoretical contribution of Robert Anton Wilson et al, explains Aeonics, and the trajectory of its distillation from the baroque theatre of angelology, and expounds the vital notions of chaos and Illumination, äs Spare originally conceived them, and as practice has altered and matured them.

This is not for the beginner in chaos magic, but it is a good guide for the observer with a grounding in the history of European magic, and a grasp of its cultural milestones. If you ever wondered why magicians do what they do, it’s because it works. If it didn’t, the tradition would have died out with the birth of science; it hasn’t and is enjoying a fertile period. Chaos magic is central to the continuing health of magical traditions, and writers like Dave Lee are central to that influence. His observation that accomplishe magicians concentrate on inner development ties chaos magic firmly to the Spiritual traditions of alchemy, and suggests that the development of chaos magic as a Spiritual endeavour has a long future, as well äs a brilliantly energetic past. Great stuff.”
Review from Sly Delaney – FT214 – Fortean Times verdict 8.

—-

”Chaos Magick has been the “sorcery” of choice for some years; indeed it is feared by many to have become way too trendy. There have been many books coming onto the market supposedly outlining the Chaos Magick vision which seem to confuse incoherence with mystification.. However, I am very pleased to say Chaotopia! is not one of them indeed I consider it one of the better books on Chaos Magick I have read in quite a long time. It was originally published in 1997 but includes a very succinct but updated introduction which gives us a snapshot of the basic principles of Chaos Magick and how it works.

In many way I found Chaotopia! a real “debate starter” it covers so many subjects, all of which demand further thought, investigation and discussion, for a relatively small tome of 200 odd pages there is little “padding” and lots of content, no wasted words here ! There are carefully placed “interludes” which include all sorts of exercises, meditations and rites in addition to practices throughout the work so Chaotopia offers a solid balance of theory and practice.

Lee outlines a theory of magick based on Leary and Robert Anton Wilson’s model of Eight Brain Circuits; this is quite an intriguing model and does offer quite a lot of insight into how magick work. He also outlines later in Chaotopia! Carroll’s model of Aeonics and cultural evolution. For the budding Chaos magician I would suggest comparing these with such developments as Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber’s Integral Model, each has its benefits and drawbacks. The Eight Brain Circuits are more practical (i.e. psychedelic), while Wilber’s model is certainly more cerebral. Aeonics has a magical foundation but I think lacks some integration into the bigger picture which Wilber’s offer. As you can see there is a lot to think about in this work ! Every chapter I read made me what to read more, think more and practice more….

There is a very insightful chapter on wealth and money, a subject looked down on by “high” magick and yet so imperative in today’s busy and demanding work. There is a great section on cursing and exorcism which avoids the paranoid mood so often found in works on “psychic self defense” and offers down to earth guidelines and well as techniques if you really need them.

The section on sex and magick is impressively without pretense and covers all sorts of issues ranging from the use of sexual fluids to S & M. I especially found the section on sex and smell impressive and felt Lee explored area’s ignored by other works.

The theoretical chapter on Magick and physics is a real intellectual stimulator. It offers a new theoretical foundation for magick as found within the Bose-Einstein Condensate. It will trigger lots of discussion and debate.

I could continue chapter in this way. There is so much packed in here. Chaotopia! is how magical books should be written. No padding, no BS, no wasted space, lots of important information, practice advise and hints. An avoidance of pretense and an openness which leaves the reader eager to go out and learn more and practice more.
Dave Lee, Thank You !”
Review in Living Traditions


—–
You enjoyed reading Bright from the Well and Chaotopia! and would like to know more about the latest techniques, articles, resources, workshops, news and events from the author, then check out DAVE LEE’S CHAOTOPIA WEBSITE www.chaotopia.com

Consciousness & Near Death Experiences

Dr Gerhard Wassermann
(Paranormal) (Strange Phenomena)


Consciousness & Near-Death Experiences
Dr Gerhard Wassermann
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1869928628
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: Strange Phenomena/Paranormal/Parapsychology/NDE.

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA&AUS editions

In 1993 I published a novel kind of theory of psychic phenomena in a book entitled Shadow Matter & Psychic Phenomena. Although I devoted a whole chapter to the issue of the possible survival of the human personality after bodily death, I did not go remotely far enough. Contrary to common sense, it seems physically quite possible that an essential component of each of us survives death. It is a part of this component which during life and death carries our memories and our ability to think, feel etc.


Perhaps a valuable guide to the possible machinery of death and dying might be obtained by attempting to elucidate Near-Death Experiences’ conceivable mechanisms (NDEs). Various people have studied these for many years. My own theorising begins with a critical reappraisal of some of these ideas on NDEs. In the course of the argument, I hope to persuade the reader of the advantages of a theory based on the new physics of Shadow Matter.

Craft of the Untamed

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An inspired vision of Traditional Witchcraft
Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold

Untitled2

 

 


Craft of The Untamed
An inspired vision of Traditional Witchcraft
Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-11-4
£14.99/US$24
Hardcover: £25/$35
Subjects: Craft/Traditional Witchcraft.

Buy UK Edition £14.99 (Softcover)

Buy UK Edition Hardcover £25.00

Buy US Edition $24 (Softcover)

Buy US Edition Hardcover $35.00

The Craft of the Untamed sets out to present the main pillars of traditional witchcraft. Its premise is that a proper tradition is defined as a timeless unity. Outwardly the tradition bears a great diversity across different lands and spirit. Traditional witchcraft is found in various sodalities and groups across the world. Even so it is possible to discern several harmonious, shared themes. These themes are the land, the crossroads, death, night and the mountain of Venus. It is witchcraft where a human and angelic blood mingles to form a special pedigree that has shaped the archetypical image of the witch.

Traditional witchcraft is largely a peasant craft. These “black arts” are works of the earth and the black soil with all its mystery of death, growth and change. This book aims to present the craft free for needless obscuration. I have endeavored to reveal the richness of the tradition as it flows down through time and geographical space.

The reader will come to appreciate and understand the wise arts both infernal and celestial; the powers wielded by the denizens of the night will be accessible; and you will come to value them for their beauty and power.

Contents: Foreword by Shani Oates/Introduction//At the Crossroads of the Worlds/Solomonic Magick//The Blood of the Living Bones/Within the Mountain of Dame Venus/The Vinculum of Eros/The Art of Timeless Tradition/Within the Veil of Night/Against the Current.

 

 

Europe
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Crowley

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A Beginners Guide
John S. Moore & John Patrick Higgins

Front coverLR

Crowley a beginners guide UK / £15.00

Crowley a beginners guide USA / US $22.00


Crowley, A Beginners Guide
John S. Moore & John Patrick Higgins
Format: Softcover/b/w Illustrated/154pp
ISBN: 978-1-906958-69-5
£15.00 /US $22.00
Subjects: Aleister Crowley/Thelema/Magick/Occult/Biography.

—–
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Nearly seventy years after his death Aleister Crowley, the notorious Beast 666, is only just beginning to attract serious academic attention. Even so we would not expect to find him on any mainstream university courses; he is still too much associated with occultism. So, Crowley – A Beginners Guide is not your standard beginner’s guide.

“Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.”
Readers may be surprised at the richness and complexity of his thought, as well as the extent of his influence. He needs background to be understood. Giving this opens fresh perspectives on much recent intellectual history.

Crowley – A Beginners Guide presents his main ideas in a straightforward and accessible format, with drawings and diagrams to place them in their historical context. It relates him to contemporary movements in art and scholarship. It describes his relationship to modernism and postmodernism, and his role in the counterculture of the sixties, as well as his continuing influence today. Interspersed are entertaining stories of his life and reputation.

Brilliantly illustrated by John Higgins, Crowley – A Beginners Guide, is a highly accessible guide to this fascinating, complex and controversial figure. It neither promotes nor condemns him, presenting hostile as well as favourable views of his character and achievement.

John S Moore is a freelance writer and independent scholar living in London. He is the author of Aleister Crowley: A Modern Master (Mandrake of Oxford, 2009) and Nietzsche – An Interpretation, (AuthorsOnline Ltd, 2011) and has written on Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and Edward Bulwer-Lytton among others. More information at www.johnsmoore.co.uk

John Patrick Higgins is a writer and illustrator. He is the author of The Narwhal and Other Stories www.amazon.co.uk/Narwhal-other-stories-Patrick-Higgins ebook/dp/B007N6KJW8
He writes art criticism for various magazines and is Creative Director of Shot Glass Theatre Company www.culturenorthernireland.org/reviews/performing-arts/shot-glass. See also www.facebook.com
He lives in Belfast, which he continues to find extraordinary.

Read a review of Crowley A Beginners Guide from Magonia Review of Books pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/crowley-for-beginners.html

Crowley – A Beginners Guide (Look Inside)

Deep Magic Begins Here . . .

Featured

tales and techniques of practical occultism
Julian Vayne

Deep Magic Begins Here
tales and techniques of practical occultism
Julian Vayne
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-52-7
£15.00 / US$22.00
Subjects: ChaosMagick/Entheogens/Occult

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One could read this as a collection of tales recounting magical experiments in practical occultism. But it is also a record of a magical crisis of confidence, a literal dark night of the soul. There are various milestones on this journey, from the mysteries of Witchcraft to tales of the Elder Gods. Deep Magic is a journal written during that long dark night of the soul.

As one might expect from such an articulate commentator, it also brings together practical how-to information, academic writing, and far reaching metaphysical exploration. This book touches on many different magical systems. Informed by the experiential approach of Chaos Magick and diving deep into the Mystery as presented through many traditions, this work explores:

Psychogeography and Magick
Transgressive bodywork
Our Vision of the End Times
Gender fluidity as spiritual process
The Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft
Zombies and the New Age movement
Buddhism meets Chaos Magick
Entheogenic magick, the law and social transformation
Mindfulness practice as the still point in the storm of chaos
The esoteric metaphysics of Pooh Bear, Tigger and Eeyore


…and much more!

Deeper Into The Underworld

Featured

Death, Ancestors & Magical Rites
Chris Allaun


Deeper into The Underworld
Death, Ancestors & Magical Rites
Chris Allaun
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-82-4
£15.00 /US $24.00
Subjects: Shamanism/Magic/Healing/Afterlife/Death Customs/Spirits Communication/Spirituality.

Deeper into the Underworld we go…

The Underworld is home to our beloved ancestors, those who gave us our flesh and blood and our breath. Their blood flows through our veins and contains great magick and power. They have the ability to help us heal old karmic wounds of the past and aide us in our spiritual development. They can teach us many things about the world of spirit. All we have to do is honor them. All we have to do is call to them.

The cycles of Life are sacred to our pagan and magical cosmology, but what of Death? As we honor life, so, too, must we honor the sacredness of death and dying. As we go further in our Underworld studies, we will learn about the Angel of Death and energetic process of dying. Death is not the end. It is a magical transition into the world of spirit where we are rejoined with our beloved ancestors. The Ancestors are our link to our past. We will learn to honor them and create a sacred shrine so that we may commune with them in a magical and healing way. By honoring the ancestors, we will strengthen our bonds with the spirits and learn to heal our family karma that began long ago and affects us even today.

By learning to work with the ancestors, we will learn to work with the spirits of the dead for magick and healing. We will learn how ancient cultures summoned the beloved dead to heal grief and say final goodbyes. We will also learn magical techniques to summon the shades of the dead and the Hidden Company; those powerful spirits that can teach us ancient wisdom of long ago that can help us tread our spiritual path to find balance and healing.


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Read Alanna Wright’s review of Deeper Into the Underworld: Death, Ancestors and Magical Rites, published in Spiral Nature Magazine
www.spiralnature.com/reviews/deeper-into-underworld-chris-allaun/

Deeper Into the Underworld: Death, Ancestors and Magical Rites
by Chris Allaun
Mandrake of Oxford, 9781906958824, 203 pp., 2018.

”Chris Allaun has released Deeper Into the Underworld: Death, Ancestors and Magical Rites as a follow-up to his first book Underworld: Shamanism, Myth and Magick. In this book, Allaun brings to life, or rather life after death, the powerful practice of ancestral spirit worship and highlights the immense spiritual benefits that come from learning to commune with the deceased. The theme of death runs strong through the book yet Allaun has presented the material in such a way that allows the reader to open to the power of Underworld forces in much the same way as shamans, witches, and magicians have for countless centuries — with the knowledge needed to access this realm, courage to face the reality of death and wisdom to tap into the spiritual power of this domain.

Written in a very straightforward and easy-to-read style, Allaun provides the reader with real-life experiential advice on how to work with ancestors as part of their magical practices. He explains,

“Honoring the dead is one of the most important parts of spirituality. We often honor our gods and goddesses and even nature spirits, but sometimes forget the most important spirits to honor; our beloved dead. Our ancestors are our family. They are our grandmothers and grandfathers and our grandmothers and grandfathers before that. They hold an energetic and magical link to us. We may not realize it, but there is a current of power that goes from us to our ancestors and from them back to us. It is strong. It is powerful. Is it the bond of family.”

In no way does Allaun skimp on ideas for how to establish and strengthen this connection to our ancestors. He offers a variety of methods that can be easily incorporated into one’s magic to help the reader open the channel to commune with their ancestors. Detailed is the way to set up an altar, created sacred space and maintain a daily devotional practice to honour loved ones who have passed on. Allaun highlights the importance of sustaining an ongoing relationship with our ancestors, rather than only honouring them sparsely through the year, as the way to truly bring them into your home and spiritual life. In this way, we can begin to communicate with our ancestors about day-to-day happenings and this in turn provides nourishment for them and us alike.

The reader is reminded this is not a one-way relationship as our ancestors benefit too from our offerings to them in the Underworld. Allaun explains, “On an energetic level, what is happening is that our prayers open our minds, energies and our spirits to our Ancestors and higher beings to establish a strong and powerful connection. Through the connection we make with the spirits, they are able to use this energy and power to help our Ancestors evolve to a higher state of being.” Later in the book, Allaun ties in how we also carry ancestral patterns that we can transmute and heal by working with ancestors in the Underworld directly.

Beyond ancestral knowledge, this book is a rich resource for information on death rites, rituals, and cultural perceptions of death that have been carried through the ages. Allaun provides insightful understanding of the way death is portrayed today in comparison to how cultures of the past understood working with the Underworld, death, and the ancestors. These include pages on Egyptian embalming and also the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient Greece. By going back in time, the reader comes to understand how human’s cultural relationship to death has been worshipped, revered, and also feared throughout time.

Throughout the book, Allaun provides many mythological stories that highlight the importance of the Underworld spirits and knowledge of how to navigate this tricky realm. These include the story of Baldur’s dreams in Norse mythology, Those Who Come From The Mountains in Japanese and Shinto mythology and Asclepius and Diana bringing back the dead in Greco-Roman mythology. Allaun does an outstanding job of providing many cross-cultural narratives involving death, so the reader has a widened perspective of a variety of spiritual understandings of the Underworld. This includes a passage of the Ghost Dance of Native Americans from the Plains region of the United States, where they were able to perform this dance to summon their ancestors and gain a personal sense of empowerment through the connection.

In sharing his personal experience, Allaun works to dissolve the fear commonly associated with death and the Underworld. A fantastic aspect of the book is the fascinating meditations provided that can be applied in a ritual setting to gain insight into the energy of death, access the Underworld, and work with ancestors. These meditations include performing a eulogy at your own funeral, graveyard meditations, tracing back family karma through lineage, and connecting with ancestors in dreams, and tapping into the blood. For those who practice traditional witchcraft, Allaun includes a ritual to connect with the Hidden Company to seek their spiritual knowledge and also Ritual of the Rose Castle to connect with the Goddess of Death.

Allaun focuses on sharing with the reader how the misconception of working with the dead became linked to evildoing with rise of Judeo-Christianity. Yet, he is honest about the association that has existed between necromancy and black magickdea intended to harm others. While he does not advocate using ancestors or magical connections made to the deceased in this way, he does acknowledge the existence and possibility of the misuse of spiritual power, which include bringing the dead back to life.

Above all, Allaun maintains that it is of the utmost importance to treat the dead with the kindness the reader would show any guest in their home. This means being welcoming and never making unfair requests. While the ancestors can be strong magical allies, Allaun makes it clear that we should never force our ancestors to do things for us. It is important that honour is always maintained, as the spirits can communicate, and being disrespectful towards an ancestor could hinder future relations.

The information in the book covers what the reader would need to know on all fronts to begin establishing a spiritual connection with their ancestors. Allaun stresses the importance of carefully selecting the spirits with whom you share energy. He acknowledges that certain spiritual entities many want to ask favours or cling on to the reader in order to gain energy. While this does not always happen, Allaun has given the reader techniques that can be used to make sure the reader remains protected and the sacred space clear of unwanted energy. The information provided includes numerous measures of protection that range from simple techniques to create clear energy to elaborate banishing rituals. It is obvious that Allaun has the reader’s interest at heart and wants to provide the most honest and accurate account of the possibilities that can emerge from working with the energies of the Underworld to ensure the reader is prepared.

There are only a few downsides of note in regard to Deeper Into The Underworld. The first being quite a few spelling and grammatical errors scattered through the book that can be distracting. The other is that there is no reference section or bibliography provided, leaving the reader to research and verify the information themselves.

Overall, Deeper Into The Underworld: Death, Ancestors and Magical Rites is a great read for anyone who feels a connection to working with the deceased. There is much to be gained from tapping into the Underworld and bringing the wisdom of our beloved ancestors into the physical realm. Consider this a go-to book from which anyone with an interest in ancestral worship or necromancy would gain something.”

Demonic Calendar Ancient Egypt

Demonic Calendar Ancient Egypt

Mogg Morgan

ISBN: 978-1-914153-01-3

$22.00+p&p / £14.99+p&p

Ebook:$9.99

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The ancient Egyptians divided the year into 36 weeks of ten days duration,  hence “decan” from Greek “ten”. The iconography of the decans predates that of all famous European books of magick such as the Testament of Solomon or the Goetia. But one thing all these spirits have in common is their malign character. 

Each decan is ruled over by particular stars, rising in succession over the course of a year. These can be observed rising on the eastern horizon just before dawn. 

You and I were born into this intricate web of stars. The 36 decans are in effect an earlier Egyptian equivalent of the later Greek system of twelve zodiacal signs. The twelve culminating decans are also the equivalent of the twelve “houses”.

All information needed to use this calendar either in a ritual or for prognostications is included, as well as an ephemeris as well as information on how it is compiled, in case you want to make your own. 

Desert Fox Oracle

desertfoxb

“The desert is so vast it can only be painted in miniature”
– Brion Gysin

The Desert Fox Oracle contains 30 cards. This number mirrors the number of days in the ancient Egyptian lunar calendar. The desert represents different things to different people. For example it can be the ultimate wilderness, the place of initiation and of the unconscious. The fox is the master of the desert and all its mysteries, he leads us on a journey through various archetypal images through which we can gain true knowledge of hidden things.

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Companion book Click for download 

Devil’s Crown (SCS IV)

Featured

Key to The Mysteries of Robert Cochrane’s Craft
Shani Oates

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The Devil’s Crown
Key to The Mysteries of Robert Cochrane’s Craft
Shani Oates
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-906958-40-4
£25/US$35
Subjects: Traditional Witchcraft/Cochranian Craft/Witchcraft/Magic.

‘The Devil’s Crown’ is the accolade of genius, awarded to poets, and leaders of men who would speak in riddles and puns the wisdom of ages. Whether Scop or Skald, the words inspired by the Muse live on in vibrant tradition under the shining aureole of the Holy Fool. It is the arcane mark of the ‘other.’ This book illuminates some of that light, sharing insights to the precious mysteries of the Robert Cochrane Tradition. His letters and works now collated finally into a single volume – ‘The Star Crossed Serpent III: The Taper that Lights the Way,’ find further expression in this companion volume.’ (Shani Oates)

“If I call upon my ancestors, I call upon forces than are within myself and exterior…, now you know what I mean when I speak of the burden of Time. (Robert Cochrane)

“The tree carried by a man wearing a red cap is a symbol of many things coalescing into two parts of the True and only Faith.” (Robert Cochrane)


“The first part is the masculine mysteries – in which is enshrined the search for the Holy Graal – and is the basis of the Arthurian legends. This is the order of the Sun – the Clan of Tubal Cain. ….In the distant past, the male clan was lead by a woman who was their priestess and chieftain . This is the origin of the legend of Robin Hood ….. and the tradition was followed through into the middle Ages when the Plantagenet Kings were officers of the masculine aspect of the Faith (The name ‘Plantagenet’ means ‘The Devil’s -Clan’). The effect of the masculine mysteries upon the world can hardly be under emphasized ….Law-making….and craftsmen’s guilds……The masculine mysteries were the direct creators of modern civilization as we know it now.” (Robert Cochrane)

Doors of Valhalla

Featured

An Esoteric Interpretation of Norse Myth
Vincent Ongkowidjojo

 

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Doors of Valhalla
An Esoteric Interpretation of Norse Myth
Vincent Ongkowidjojo
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-72-5
£15.00 / US $24.00
Subjects: Runes/Odinism/Northern Tradition.

In Doors of Valhalla, the author offers a comprehensive interpretation of Norse mythology based on contemporary esoteric ideas.

From the author’s introduction:
“In modern days, the Ageless Wisdom was first given out by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and later by different writers such as Dion Fortune, Annie Besant, and Alice Bailey. It makes sense to relate what they have to say about the world of the soul to the myth and mystery of Ancient Scandinavia.”

From Maria Kvilhaug’s foreword:
“In his Doors of Valhalla, Vincent Ongkowidjojo makes an honest attempt to consider the worlds of Norse mythology as various planes of consciousness on the path towards spiritual enlightenment in the light of Theosophy and Vedic traditions.”

From David Parry’s afterword:
“His excellent book Doors of Valhalla: An Esoteric Interpretation of Norse Mythology demands our attention, while clearly setting fresh standards for this sort of scholarship.”

Freya Aswynn on the book:
“This is a book that will shake up the Heathen Community. … It fills a glaring hole in the Northern Mysteries and this will be most welcomed by those in Heathenry willing to explore the deeper mysteries behind the lore.”

As a long time student of Freya Aswynn, Vincent Ongkowidjojo helps run her School of Runes and Northern Mysteries. Vincent’s vision is rooted in Western and Eastern esoteric philosophies. He earlier published Secrets of Asgard and Runen in de Noordse traditie. Visit Vincent’s website for latest updates on talks, courses and workshops.

Drawing in Real Perspective

Featured

Drawing in Real Perspective
A new approach to space with natural and immediate application
Xavier Bolot
Format: Softcover/244pp
ISBN: 8781906958770
£14.99/$22
Subjects: Art/Art History/Art Theory/Drawing/Painting.

In this book we learn how to draw using a natural technique that is amazingly efficient and simple. Real Perspective is a new approach to space as seen by our eyes.

Perspective is an integral part of drawing and painting. It is however poorly understood today. Our representation of perspective in western countries dates from the 17th century, enforced by an edict made by Louis XIV despot of France. It consisted of drawing receding straight lines starting from a vanishing point.

However, the ancient Greeks used specific curves. This heritage was not taken up during the Renaissance.

In an investigative atmosphere, this book unmasks beliefs we received on the Renaissance and our contemporary culture. We learn to believe what we see, using a natural technique that is amazingly efficient and simple.


We rediscover again the Greek knowledge, and the researches among others of Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse and David Hockney.

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Dreams

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Exploring uncharted depths of consciousness

Mary Phelan

Dreams: Exploring uncharted depths of consciousness

Mary Phelan

ISBN: 978-1-906958-98-5, 242pp

£15.00+p&p / $22.00+p&p

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This book will take the reader on a journey through the world of dreams, the history of dream interpretation and of how dreamers and dreaming in combination with taking action, have made the world what it is today. The author’s methodology explains the craft of effective dream capture and explores the meanings of over one hundred dream symbols. Above all, this manual is ideal for readers in search of self-knowledge and the personal power that comes through better perception of the immediate environment, career opportunities and personal encounters.

Put your dreams to work now.

Remove the blocks that are holding your life up.

Draw upon the wisdom of sages and writers from times past.

Explore those uncharted depths of consciousness.

Tune into your subconscious. Record your night-time imagery. Converse with your dream counsellors and open up a bright new future – yours.

Mary Phelan was born in Dublin and lived in Germany before settling in London. Today, she is a journalist and copywriter, design philosopher, photographer and art historian. She is an art history graduate of University College London and has a Master’s degree in English Literature from the Open University.   A committed copywriter, she has written hundreds of advertising scripts for companies and organisations. She has also worked as a tutor of English literature.

Reviews:

Mary Phelan’s Dreams, have been out for less than a month and already found its way into the top 10 list of which books to get this Xmas on dailymom.com – https://dailymom.com/discover/gifts-for-readers-from-pre-teens-to-adults/

Thrive global – https://thriveglobal.com/stories/mary-phelan-life-has-taught-me-never-to-give-up/

Authority Magazin – https://medium.com/authority-magazine/author-mary-phelan-how-i-hope-that-my-journey-of-self-analysis-can-inspire-and-help-others-ef04346149c8

You can follow Mary Phelan on the social media platforms

LinkedIn profile is:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-phelan-6660aa1b?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

Read Mary Phelan’s travel and lighter literary articles at https://hubpages.com/@maryphelan

Mary Phelan’s just-for-fun blog is at http://maryphelan.blogspot.com/

Or you can follow her on Twitter @BlondeMary

Egyptian Magick

A Spirited Guide

ISBN 9781906958992. 432pp

£20.00+p&p /$26.00+p&p, softcover

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Altar edition

ISBN 9781914153006,

Altar edition, (jacketed case laminate)
available

Altar edition

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“Within its own ‘world view’ Egyptian Heka was of far more exalted significance than its Coptic descendant or Western approximation.”

Robert Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice 247

Western magick is no longer an approximation; through practice and study it has recovered its memory. This magick is “Amoral and quintessentially effective” or to use the Egyptian term, it is called Akh, an effective or cunning power. This is a power to which gods, men, and all nature are subject. It was still the same force “whether used by god, king, priest, private individual, rebel or foreign enemy, whether hostile or beneficent, sanctioned or suppressed.” Does this mean that one can use magick for bad things with impunity? Absolutely not, for one is punished for what one does rather for the means one used, which are just the natural laws of the universe. Ultimately all this magick is theurgy, literally the work of the gods. Ideally, this becomes part of a practical theology by which the practitioner becomes, through “dynamic resonance” the image of the gods or divine forces he or she emulates. Thus the ultimate aim of the magician is knowledge and transcendence. 

So here is an authoritative guide aimed at those who actually want to practice this magick. The scholarly reader may also find the experimental theurgy a useful perspective. Essentially a compilation, bringing together with some revision, all of the material and core ideas on the Egyptian magical religion from previous books, presenting them here as a complete working system. Topics including openings, initiations, imaginal realms, basic techniques and applications through a ritual year of the gods.

Egyptian Shaman

Nick Farrell

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Egyptian Shaman
Nick Farrell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-42-8
£15.00 / US $24.00
Subjects: Ancient Egypt/Egyptian Magick/Shamanism.


The spiritual traditions of Ancient Egypt are well documented and are at the forefront of the Western Mystery and Magical Tradition. But they are a gloss over a more primal “shamanic” tradition which gets to the essence of Nature and its relationship with humanity, life and death.

This book is a practical manual for those who wish to explore that primal spirituality using Egyptian symbolism. As Egypt was one of the village cultures, so Egyptian shamanism was one of the first to operate in an urban environment, making its techniques suitable for modern times.

Egyptian Shaman paints the picture of what it was like to be a village priest in Ancient Egypt before describing the practical techniques which would have been employed during those times. These techniques, which have never been revealed before, have been adapted for modern minds with the intention of making this a practical spiritual path.

The book controversially contains a chapter on exorcism and dealing with the dead, which many have claimed are subjects which should not be published. It shows how later Egyptian texts, such as the Book of the Dead, were Shamanic guide books to the Underworld.This is a book containing the keys to transmute,not only the self, but the whole planet.


THE AUTHOR
Nick Farrell is a writer and journalist based in Rome. After a lifetime in the Western Mystery Tradition, during which he was taught by some of the luminaries of the Esoteric World, including Marian Green, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, David Goddard and Chic and Tabatha Cicero, he founded the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, which is a worldwide traditional Golden Dawn Order. He has also written several books on esoteric subjects including the esoteric classic Making Talismans, Magical Pathworking, and The Druidic Order of Pendragon. He has also written Mathers’ Last Secret and King Over the Water which deals with the Golden Dawn tradition.

Elmer Crowley

Featured

A Katabasic Nekyia
Tom Bradley
(illustrated by David Aronson & Nick Patterson)

Elmer Crowley / USA & AUS / $22.00

Elmer Crowley / UK / £15.00


Elmer Crowley
A Katabasic Nekyia
Tom Bradley, David Aronson, Nick Patterson.
Format: Softcover/132 pp – illustrated – many in colour.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-55-8
US $22.00 / UK £15.00
Subjects: Aleister Crowley & Thelema/picaresque graphic novel.

Bless me,
curse me.
For better or worse, my fallopian fall into matter. . .

After making careful preparations to ensure himself a proper reincarnation,
the dying ALEISTER CROWLEY flubs one syllable of the magickal incantation . . .
and comes back as ELMER FUDD.

———————–

– Back story on this publication –

David Aronson has become ill, and is unable to complete the illustrations for ELMER CROWLEY. But the good news is that the great Nick Patterson has agreed to step in. Nick collaborated with Tom Bradley on a couple of books, including FAMILY ROMANCE (Jaded Ibis Press)–

www.thedrillpress.com/sad/2012-08-01/sad-2012-08-01-romance-tbradley-01.shtml

Just by coincidence, this happens to work out perfectly.
After making careful preparations to ensure himself a proper reincarnation, the dying Aleister Crowley flubs one syllable of the magickal incantation…and comes back as Elmer Fudd.

The pictures David Aronson did before getting sick are black and white. They take Crowley from his death, through his judgement in the Hall of the Divine Kings, and stop just as he is being sucked into Looney Tunes Land.

At that point, Nick Patterson takes over, and the color is switched on. It’s like the old movie, when Dorothy gets out of Kansas and arrives in Oz. The different style of pictures announces the big change in scene.

—-

– Praise for Elmer Crowley: a katabasic nekyia

Reading Elmer Crowley is like reading Crowley’s inner dialogue at 3am, after an intensive journey into his own inner abyss. It is, therefore, a magickal working that Crowley himself would be proud of.
– Gwendolyn von Taunton, author of Northern Traditions

Of Aleister Crowley’s many fictionalizations, this novel gets best into his head. Erudite, prideful, lascivious, funniest man of his time, and the mightiest spiritual spelunker–he speaks and shouts from these pages as clearly as he did in his Autohagiography, which is paradoxical, given the irreal setting.
– Barry Katz, HTMLGIANT

This book…captures the feel of Crowley with his bawdy, politically incorrect irreverence, his arrogance and his committed magickal spirituality and awareness.
– Charlotte Rogers, author of P is for Prostitute

The voice is dead perfect…I can’t imagine a hip Thelemite NOT having this book in her library.
– Don Webb, author of Through Dark Angles, former High Priest, Temple of Set

This self-described “picaresque graphic novel” reads like an account of Crowley’s death-bed fever dream or an afterlife bardo journey gone terribly wrong, wherein the fifty-eight Wrathful Deities take on the aspect of warped and sinister versions of Looney Toons archetypes…. the result reads like a trippy, post-mortem, long-lost epilogue to The Confessions.
– Richard Kaczynski, author of Perdurbo: The Life of Aleister Crowley

Epoch

Featured

The Esotericon & Portals of Chaos

By Peter Carroll and Matt Kaybryn

The Epoch – Hardbound Folio Book & Altar Icon Card Deck.

The Book: This fully illustrated and illuminated hardback opens with a detailed historical resume of magical and esoteric thought (where it came from and where it may go) before presenting the reader with three complete grimoires.

The Deck: A Cartomagical tool for the 21st century, the Deck presents 54 glorious Altar Icons spanning the three Spheres of Elements, Bi-Planets and Stellar god-forms. Hardcover: 216 pages, 28cmx23cm
Publisher: Arcanorium College (21 Mar 2014)
ISBN-10: 0992848822
ISBN-13: 978-0992848828

UK Price – Elsewhere, use same buttons, see below for guide to worldwide postage.

Book £40.00+p&p Click HERE

Deck £15.00 (VAT inc)+p&p Click HERE

Both for £50.00+p&p Click HERE

Postage outside UK is expensive as this is a premium book, could be an additional 50% of order total, eg it costs about £40 to send both items, we will contact you with the actual cost, and refund if preferred. Why not start with the book and come back for the cards if you find you need them, it works out same postage wise


” This really is a pantheon for the present day: up-to-date technowizard
artwork, a commentary which soars over millennia of tradition, picking out
what is useful and relevant at the present, and icons which sum up what
deities from the whole span of Western and not-so-Western culture have
cumulatively come to mean. This is a book to which goddesses and gods,
historically so sensitive about their images, should be happy to belong.”

Professor Ronald Hutton – Fellow of the British Academy

” Not content to release a new grimoire, the Chancellor of Arcanorium College has produced three. Oh, also, one of them is a Necronomicon.

Elemental, Planetary, and Lovecraftian grimoires are joined by an accompanying tome of digitally and painstakingly rendered icons. The  Portals of Chaos, and its Chaobala systemisation, marks a particularly cohesive collection of Carroll’s work. But it also contains much exciting new material. Exploration of bi-planetary sorcery – a central component of Renaissance magic somewhat absent in modern occult discourse – is a particularly important feature.

Epoch is a useful resource both for those just starting out and for experienced magicians. There is something here to excite and challenge
occultists of many different dispositions and practices. ”    Alexander Cummins – Author of ‘The Starry Rubric’

“The enormous scope of the theory expounded within, coupled with the extraordinary pictures (which are better than anything of this ilk since Freida got down with her paintbrushes), provoke many thoughts as well as providing a neat summary of some complex ideas. Simultaneously a history and a prediction, it casts a spell covering spacetime and beyond, allowing your magick to have results.” Nikki Wyrd -Author of ‘The Book of Baphomet’

Pulled together, it is a fantastic cohesion of ideas in need of cohering, doubly so because the cohesion makes no claims to antiquity and doesn’t have to fit with either Neoplatonic emanations or Sanskrit body centres. Getting your head around the Chaobala is getting your head around a substantially updated magical cosmology. If that kind of thing is your jam, this kind of book is your toast. Gordon White – Runesoup

Without a doubt, the Epoch will have a great influence on the chaos magick paradigm and modern magick in general for years to come. I think every magician, even if they have their own correspondences, should examine the Chaobola system for its elegance and breadth. James Wilber – Scroll of Thoth

Peter Carroll


Exhumation of A Murder

The Life and Trial of Major Armstrong
Robin Odell
(Criminology) (True Crime)


Exhumation of A Murder
The Life and Trial of Major Armstrong
Robin Odell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 186992892x New ISBN 9 781869 928926
£15.00/US$22.00
Subjects: Criminology / True Crime

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA&AUS edition

”The case of Major Armstrong, the celebrated Hay Poisoner, the only solicitor ever to hang, is one of those classic, old-fashioned English murders which hail from the heyday of court-room drama when, with the hangman lurking in the pine-and-panel wings and the black cap an object of horrifyingly alarming currency rather than mere symbolism, the loser in ‘the black dock’s dreadful pen’ lost all. It comes straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s essayed nostalgia for the era of the Great British Murder, when, after a Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire, you put your feet up on the sofa and, with a good strong cup of mahogany-brown tea, read all about the latest ‘good’ murder in the News of the World. And the Armstrong case was unquestionably one of the best; right up there in the grand tradition of Dr Palmer of Rugeley, Neill Cream, Mrs Maybrick, Dr Crippen, Seddon, and George Joseph Smith.”
– Richard Whittington-Egan


”Now the case itself, as has been said to you, is a remarkable one, a deeply interesting one and I doubt whether any of us engaged here today have in recollection so remarkable a case in its incidents.”
– Mr Justice Darling, Herefordshire Winter Assizes, Thursday, 13th April 1922


”On the rim of the twentieth century loom the Titans – Seddon, Armstrong, Crippen, G.J. Smith and Landru, and then, in the era of booze and bullets, art descends literally to hack-work.”
– Dorothy Dunbar, Blood in the Parlour


Praise for EXHUMATION OF A MURDER

”This is, indisputably, a comprehensive study; embracing every aspect, exploring every angle; chronicling events and interpreting participants from remote and obscure beginnings to violent or peaceful ends. I advise anyone who has long subsisted on intriguing scraps and morsels about Armstrong to have this book ready to hand when leisure offers time for a satisfying repast…it is unique, and will inevitably become the last word on Armstrong and the case which bears his name.”
– Edgar Lustgarten

EXHUMATION OF A MURDER is the fruit of painstaking research over many years by J.H.H.Gaute, a well-known authority on the literature of crime and a former editor on the genre for a major publisher, and the late Dr Hubert Trumper who lived at Cusop, near Hay-On-Wye, the village where Armstrong lived and carried out his crime. This book contains a wealth of documents and photographs.

*******************************************************************************************

SPECIAL EVENT

Featuring ROBIN ODELL in HAY-ON-WYE, at Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, Lion Street.
*******************************************************************************************
Hay_clocktower
robin_odell3

On Saturday 2 September 2006, we travelled to the town of Hay-On-Wye to accompany Robin Odell for a book signing at the atmospheric Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, 39 Lion Street, where there is a good selection of True Crime and Murder & Mystery Fiction titles, by masters such as Dennis Wheatley, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and Robin Odell.

Robin was fresh from his lecture to the History of Medicine Society of Wales. Due to a booking mishap, it was relocated from Hay to Builth Wells! Even so there was a steady stream of interested customers and connoisseurs of the genre – some of whom, are shown in the photo: From left to right, Robin Odell, Anne & (sitting) Derek Addyman, Robin Odell’s partner ‘Non’, and holding glasses of wine are two lovely ladies, Joan & Friend. Thank you ; )
– Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, 5 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford, HR3 5AA.

Hay-On-Wye is a good place with a buzz to visit. There are lots of bookshops covering subjects for every interest, as well as eating places and shops for more retail therapy. We stayed up the road in Hereford and were directed to the Rose Garden pub just north of the Roman Road in Munstone. The beer was excellent – Flowers IPA and the home made food really was just that. In Hay we had another lovely pint, Old Black Lion Ale at the Black Lion in Lion Street – Major Armstrong’s ‘local’ so they say – although not too local as his wife didn’t like him drinking! The food there was also really good. The cafe opposite the Clock Tower (see below) is very user friendly – newspapers, real coffee –


For information about Hay-On-Wye, including town maps, books, the Literary Festival, places to eat, hotels, B&Bs, shopping, and things to do, please check out the Official Hay-On-Wye Website www.hay-on-wye.co.uk

*****

 

FIRECHILD

The Life and Magic of Maxine Sanders “Witch Queen”
Maxine Sanders
OUT OF PRINT

Out Of Print

Firechild
The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders ‘Witch Queen’
Maxine Sanders


FIRECHILD. One of the world’s most influential and respected witches, Maxine Sanders first caught worldwide public attention while married to the celebrated – and controversial – ‘King of the Witches’, Alex Sanders.

A highly respected priestess of the Sacred Mysteries, in her role of teacher she has encouraged, enabled and inspired students of the priesthood to take on the conscious mantle of their spiritual potential.

In this long awaited autobiography Maxine reflects on her life and magical experiences spanning modern witchcraft, wicca, paganism, Gods and Goddesses, seasonal rituals, sabbats, ceremonial magic, kabbalah and the sacred magic of the angels.

This is a unique, poignant and often humorous memoir of an extraordinary life, by a rare, courageous and inspiring woman.

The Sanders were leading figures of the 1960s occult revival, popularising their own tradition widely known as Alexandrian witchcraft.

Alex and Maxine were much sought after teachers of the Arts Magical and initiated many spiritual aspirants into the Mysteries, when the Craft was still secretive and difficult to access for those seeking initiation.

Here many of the rumours regarding Alex and Maxine are either confirmed, verified and clarified, or denied; the real facts being far more interesting and humorous than hearsay.

”This is one of the most important books ever published on modern paganism: a full and candid autobiography by one of its most influential, and charismatic figures.”
Professor Ronald Hutton – Author of The Triumph of the Moon
(Oxford University Press)

Maxine Sanders official website maxinesanders.co.uk

Fox Magic

Fox Magic – Handbook of Chinese Witchcraft and Alchemy in the Fox Tradition

Jason Read

978-1-914153-07-5 (pbk) 168pp

UK £15.00+p&p Order

USA $22.00+p&p Order

Ebook Order

Special “Altar” edition, jacketed case laminate, colour images

978-1-914153-08-2 (Jacketed cased laminate) 172pp

£30 UK Order

$40 USA Order

According to ancient legends, thousands of years ago a mysterious being known as the Nine Tail Fox taught her devotees the secrets of witchcraft and alchemy. This witch cult survives to this day and is practiced in many Chinese and Japanese communities in relative secrecy.

From her origins with the ancient Wu Shamans and the Tantric dakinis, the author explores this unique and often overlooked form of witchcraft.

Learn the history of the Fox Immortal and her influence on Asian politics and history. Investigate the Tantric origins of the Fox Goddess.

Learn the secret rituals from the Chinese grimoires that invoke the help and aid of the Fox Immortal as a personal magical tutor.

Learn the ways of glamour and fascination taught to devotees of the Fox Temple. Investigate the mysterious tantric rites of the Tachikawa Ryu.

Investigate the Mysteries of the white branch of death and the red branch of sexuality.

Learn some of the many spells used by the Fox cult of witches.

Wolfman Denny Sargent reviews Fox Magic

Gateway to Hell

Margaret Bingley
(Occult Fiction) (Occult Thriller)


Click here for Kindle UK Edition

Click here for Kindle USA Edition


Gateway to Hell
Margaret Bingley
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£9.99/US$18
Subjects: Occult Fiction/Egyptian Magick.


Child psychologist Nicola Grainger and her husband Howard have chosen to remain childless, but when Nicola’s sister and her husband are killed in a car accident in Egypt, Nicola feels duty bound to offer their young twin sons a home.

After their arrival, it quickly becomes clear that their upbringing in Egypt, their father’s country, has left them spoiled and difficult to handle. They also have the disconcerting ability to finish each other’s sentences and constantly answer to each other’s names. At times Nicola feels that they’re not two children at all, but in fact represent different aspects of one child.

As a child psychologist, Nicola knows that the boys need time to adjust to their new life, but she has failed to understand their ability to read the minds of people around them, playing on their most terrifying subconscious fears with horrific results.


In addition to these problems, Nicola finds that she is having to cope with the boys’ attachment to the handsome Sergei, a friend of their father’s in Egypt, who visits them regularly to provide a much needed link between their past life and their new one. Only Sergei truly understands these children, and only Sergei knows the truth about their past and what the future holds for them. As he draws Nicola into his magnetic web she is literally unable to get him out of her mind. To the astonishment of everyone, including herself, she abandons Howard and travels to Egypt with Sergei and her nephews. Once there, she is plunged into a world of dark eroticism and looming evil – the hidden, gaping gateway to hell.

GREAT PURPLE HOO-HA

part I&II
Philip H. Farber
(Magical Fiction)

The Great Purple Hoo-Ha part I
Philip H. Farber
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-16-9
£9.99/US$14.99
Subjects: Fiction/Magick/NLP.

‘Farber’s writing is a joyride through the psyche. Absurdity and the internal workings of our own beliefs are less than a hair’s width apart – and Farber illustrates this with inimitable style, humor, and a kitschy sense of self- referential pseudo-realism.’
– LaSara Firefox Allen, MPNLP,
Developer of Gratitude Games and author of Sexy Witch


Special Offer:

GPHH Part 1&2 for Only £12.99+p&p

GPHH Part 1&2 for Only $22.00+p&p


‘As blatant propaganda, The Great Purple Hoo-Ha is funnier than Catholicism and slightly less disgusting than ads for colonic irrigation.’
— Ivan Stang,
Church of the Subgenius

‘A surreal, submodalicious page turner that will have you leaping from the written words to your own life in a joyous celebration and an aching wish for your own Hoo-Ha.’
— Donald Michael Kraig,
author of Modern Magick and The Resurrection Murders.

”From a magicko-religious point of view I’d say, ‘The Great Purple Hoo-Ha proves that changing Perception is the Great Work’. From a reader’s perspective I’d say, ‘It’s like Stranger in a Strange Land except much funnier and with hotter sex.’ From a friend’s perspective I’d say, ‘Dude, you should buy this!'”
— Don Webb, author of Aleister Crowley: The Fire and the Force and Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path.


‘Joe had a drinking problem. The possible demise of his television talk show and the end of his career had tilted a very big bottle of Old Mystery into his guts.

Now he was having trouble telling where the hallucinations ended and reality began. Had the mysterious young man with the cat – whom nobody else could see – really granted him a magical wish for fame and fortune?

Were the sex-obsessed cultists he was investigating on the show really bringing on the End of the World? Where did the sentient cream-filled pastries come from? Who was the Most Disgusting Rock Star Ever?

And, more importantly, would Joe ever get his new girlfriend, the Goddess, into bed?’

Handbook for Rebels & Outlaws

Mark L. Mirabello
(Intellectual History) (Philosophy)

C

Handbook For Rebels & Outlaws
Mark L. Mirabello
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781906958008
Subjects: Intellectual History/Philosophy.

 £15.00 / US$25.00

Click HERE for Handbook for Rebels & Outlaws / UK

Click HERE for Handbook for Rebels & Outlaws /USA


Click here for Kindle UK Edition

Click here for Kindle USA edition


 

Handbook for Rebels and Outlaws is a book about freedom. Written for intellectual swashbucklers-men and women who are radicals in politics and infidels in religion-warriors who hammer the stake of fear into the heart of tyranny-this volume belongs in select book collections, between the black magic and the pornography texts.

Contents: Blasphemy; Terrorism (History and Practice); Megaterrorism (Biological Weapons, Chemical Weapons, and Nuclear Weapons); Survivalism and Weapons of Mass Destruction; Non-Violent Resistance (Hunger Strike, General Strike, Civil Disobedience); The “Temporary Autonomous Zone”; Communications, Clandestine; The Revolutionary Cell; The Assassin in History; “Dirty War” and the State; Coup d’Etat (Theory and Practice); Secret Police (Techniques and Tricks); Deception in War (Theory and Practice); Guerillas, Partisans, and Asymmetric Warfare (History and Practice); The Urban Guerilla; The Bandit and Pirate in History and Legend; Mafias and Organized Crime; White-Collar Crime (Non-Violent Crime); Violent Crime; Tyranny in History (Four Types Of); The Police in History; The Informant in History; Evidence (Physical and Eye-Witness); State-Sanctioned Killing; Torture (History and Practice); Prison and Punishment; Escape form “Controlled Custody”; Techniques of the Fugitive.

Mark Mirabello, who has served as visiting Professor at Nizhny Novgorod University in Russia, is a Professor of History at Shawnee State University in the U.S.A.He has a PhD from the University of Glasgow and an M.A. from the University of Virginia. Mirabello’s area of expertise is the “outlaw” history on the “frontiers and margins” of human civilization. He lectures on Alternative Religions and Cults, Terrorism and Crime, Banned Books, Intellectual History, and other subjects. According to Mirabello, “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.”Mirabello’s publications deal with the supernatural (The Odin Brotherhood and The Crimes of Jehovah), the unnatural (The Cannibal Within), and the natural (Handbook for Rebels and Outlaws). The Cannibal Within has appeared in an Italian-language translation (Il Cannibale Dentro) by Stefania Marchini from Edizioni Clandestine.

Heart Vision: Tarot’s Inner Path

Featured

Michael Orlando Yaccarino
Foreword by Rachel Pollack
Afterword by Normandi Ellis

Format: Softcover
ISBN 9781906958817
£15.00+p&p / US$24.00+p&p

Click Here for  USA edition

Click HERE  for UK edition

Click here for Kindle UK edition

Click here for Kindle USA edition
—————————————————————–

Each of us is travelling upon an ever-evolving path toward greater illumination. The Tarot can provide deep awareness on many levels. Performed effectively, a Tarot reading encourages individual strengths, while proposing options to overcoming unhelpful blocks. Revelation unfolds within the open heart.

The mystical deck has fascinated both nonprofessional and paranormal scholars alike since its early development in the 15th century. Today, a myriad of books on using the cards to read to others is readily available. However, few works focus exclusively on the process of self-reading. Heart Vision: Tarot’s Inner Path is your in-depth, hands-on guide for a balanced path of discovery through the art of solitary reading.

Highlights include card-by-card message interpretations; a special focus on self-contemplation; the step-by-step process of self-reading unique to this work; and a variety of simple yet powerful spreads utilizing no more than six cards original to this book, many illuminated by actual self-readings. World-leading Tarot authority Rachel Pollack provides an insightful foreword. Award-winning author and specialist in Ancient Egyptian spirituality, Normandi Ellis offers an illuminating afterword. In addition to the wisdom of diverse spiritual traditions, the text includes exclusive comments by a variety of contemporary luminaries in the realms of the mystical and magical. And acclaimed artists Scot D. Ryersson, Gary Lund, and David Palladini all contribute to the book’s stunning illustrations. Enriched throughout by the wisdom of diverse spiritual traditions, in these pages, you will find an innovative pathway to inner transformation.

Front-cover art: Gary Lund
Back-cover art: David Palladini
Cover design: Scot D. Ryersson

The author has read, taught, and written about the Tarot for many years. He holds degrees in psychology and film studies from New York University. Previous books co-authored with Scot D. Ryersson include Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati, The Marchesa Casati: Portraits of a Muse, and The Princess of Wax: A Cruel Tale. Also with Ryersson, he co-edited Spectral Haunts and Phantom Lovers.

 

Visit the official ​Heart Vision​ website
Heart Vision: Book | Michael Orlando (casatiarchives.wixsite.com)

Author’s other work

 

Book Reviews:

“Probably one of the best books on the Tarot that I have ever read. A must for all Tarotists.”  —Anthony Pearson-Moorhouse, The Elvish Taylor and Owner/Partner of Sacred Earth (Suffolk, United Kingdom)

“Yaccarino’s approach to the Tarot is direct and invigorating, with the emphasis on self-reading. As a rule of thumb, I often test the inherent magickal quality of any such tome by opening it at random and letting my eye alight on the first words I see. In this case, the book opened at the King of Cups, which was disturbingly accurate. With the attitude of ‘Okay, but what else can you tell me?’, it then opened to the Nine of Pentacles. Again, exquisitely apt. In essence, with this clear and lucid book, you can know it works.”       —Alan Richardson, author of numerous books on magick, magicians, and Earth mysteries, including Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune and Earth God Risen

“A beautiful book, flowing and inviting, presented with an openness and clarity in both writing and visuals.”  —Gary Lund, award-winning painter, sculptor, and animation film designer

“It is through the imagery of Tarot that Yaccarino explores each of the arcana. As Heart Vision unfolds, Michael skillfully guides us through the deck, deftly bringing our attention to the hidden, background imagery and the ‘veiled aspects’ of each card. But it’s not all about the iconography: a comprehensive range of spreads are given, with some very interesting variations. There are also examples of readings that demonstrate how the interpretative process unfolds. Little gems of wisdom are scattered through the pages, culled from Yaccarino’s clearly extensive reading and conversations with contemporary practitioners. This is an excellent introduction to the Tarot, and an enjoyable and illuminating text for the seasoned reader, too.” —from The Blog of Baphomet by Julian Vayne, author of Deep Magic Begins Here…: Tales and Techniques of Practical Occultism and Magick Works: Stories of Occultism in Theory and Practice

“The introduction to this book is penned by the renowned Tarotmancer Rachel Pollack. She describes this book as one of ‘distilled simplicity,’ designed for the apprentice but which has sufficient maturity and depth for seasoned readers too. It is focused on the solitary reader for self-analysis, offering a unique approach to the visionary dreaming world to nourish heart and soul by awakening the mind. After a brief but concise history of the Tarot, Michael leads the reader into a vivid perspective of mystical imagery as the art of vision within Reality. It serves as a potent tool, drawing the reader to attend the hermetic sciences and its philosophies to fulfil a divine purpose—not as amusement or entertainment. The pursuit of wisdom is ever the key. Emphasising the distinctions of revealed and veiled messages, it explains how these build upon one another to synergise profound insight. Michael provides a break-down of the Arcana into elemental suits, injecting innovative expression into their multi-layered symbolisms. He then introduces several original spreads providing unique formats, including those aptly named ‘The Crossroads’ and ‘The Bridge.’  Ranging from a single spread to six cards, they encompass all needs and situations, guiding the reader always towards decisive understanding and self-awareness as a means of access to their inner dialogue. Intent is captured at source. The reader is made aware of the folly of this tool as a means of prediction, a waste of soul talent that erodes free will and hope. Instead, it instils hope through the engagement of the sacred harmony that can be achieved through self-expression and fulfilment. With lucid equanimity, Michael directs the reader to engage that precious dynamic to manifest the message as translatable instruction. Using multi-disciplinary techniques, the ‘happening’ Michael refers to becomes a transformative engagement of the mysteries proper through the miraculous art!” —by Shani Oates, author of The Devil’s Crown: Key to the Mysteries of Robert Cochrane’s Craft and The Arcane Veil: Ten Discourses on the Craft and the History of Magic

TAROT, DIVINATION & SPIRITUALITY

usa

Helrunar

A Manual of Rune Magick
Jan Fries

1869928903_color

Helrunar
A Manual of Rune Magick
Jan Fries
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781869928902
£24.99/US$35
Subjects: Runes/Magick/Northern Tradition/Odinism.

The Runes are a pan-European magical language. Its roots lie in the ancient pagan beliefs of our ancestors, who built many thousands of stones circles, long barrows and dolmens throughout ancient Europe. These same symbols and techniques were used by the pagan Celts and Germans. This book is a complete manual of magick based upon arcane symbolism and secret techniques.

‘When I went to school, my history teacher told us about the old Germani. In her opinion, the Taunus mountains were populated by a bunch of brawny brawlers who wore horned helmets and small pieces of pelt. They lived in hilltop settlements which were fortified by ringwalls. Barely able to manage agriculture, they had to rely on hunting to fill their stomachs. They lived in shabby huts with mud-plastered walls and when the Romans came, they fought the invaders with crude swords, pointy sticks and by hurling rocks at them…’

‘Nowadays, the ringwalls of the Taunus are known as the work of La Tène Celts, who lived on the heights in well organised cities. For this new edition much of the text has been rewritten and updated. A large section on the bronze ages, the Celts, Germani and the later Vikings added. The theme of Wodan and Helja has been elaborated with more detail on pagan Scandinavia. The chapter on magical rune inscriptions has been extended.

Contents:
Meaning /Urda /Origins /Futhorc /Magical inscriptions / Memorial stones /Fascism / Titles / Cosmology / Nature / Qabala / Vision / Werdandi / Rune stance / Breathing/ Vowel song / Problems / Tune in / Health? / Divination / Alignments / Sigil sorcery / Seiðr and Seething / Energy /lda / Rune companion / Sources

Buy in UK 

Buy USA & Rest of World Edition

Buy Epub Now

‘…eminently practical and certainly breaks new ground.’ – Ronald Hutton
(author of Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles)

Recommended by The Cauldron.

‘a very meaty read…’PJ in Gippeswic.

Hippalos

Kamil Zvelebil
(Fiction)


Hippalos
Kamil Zvelebil
Available as an ebook


Click here for Kindle UK edition

Click here for Kindle USA edition


For those interested in my study “Isis in India” you might enjoy this electronic version of Zvelebil’s factional account of the life of Hippalos. The late Kamil Zvelebil was a great scholar of South India, although not such a good novelist . . . even so it has much value as an account of an interesting and little known period of Indian History. The print edition currently unavailable and there is a small charge for the ebook – although you can read a sample chapter first…

Softcover/272pp/3 maps/ISBN: 1869928-415/Fiction
OUT OF PRINT

Greek and Indian sources tell of an Alexandrian Greek navigator called Hippalos. He discovered a direct route across the ocean from the Red sea, to legendary Musiris in South India. 2000 miles of open ocean in 30 days and nights. India: when the Kama Sutra was first written down. India where Buddhists and Hindus hate each other with a vengeance and where mighty dynasties are embroiled in bloody war. Against this powerful backdrop the heart of Hippalos is tested to its limit as friends fight for survival and a passionate love affair grows. Hippalos’s journey, based on fact, offers us a way through the vast ocean of Indian story. You will be entertained and then initiated into the secrets of ancient India as you have never before seen it.

About the author:
Kamil V. Zvelebil, born in 1927, is professor-emeritus of Indian studies at the universities of Chicago, Heidelberg, Utrecht and Prague and also an ordained Zen Buddhist monk.


I, Crowley

Snoo Wilson
(Occult Fiction)

I, Crowley
Snoo Wilson
ISBN: 9781869928476
£15.00 / US$24.00

Click HERE for the UK edition

Click HERE for the USA & AUS

‘I never killed Raoul Loveday with a magical spell.’

Aleister Crowley, otherwise known as the Beast 666, shared membership of the Golden Dawn with W.B. Yeats, and publishers with D.H. Lawrence. Now in a beyond-the-grave autobiography, he recounts his own vocation, his practise of sex magic, and his bruising encounters with his contemporaries.
The great magus, whose own world-conquering creed, The Book of the Law, was written in Cairo in 1904, was according to him, no murderer, but a prophet and practitioner of all kinds of sexual freedom and new magical systems.
‘I shall continue to protest my innocence as long as I have a hole in my bottom.’
The Wickedest Man in the World? Or Post-Christian Messiah? Read this book and judge for yourself.

‘intriguing and sordidly entertaining’ – Gay Times

‘Brilliant . . . the Great Beast explaining himself in lapel-grabbing prose:’
– Simon Callow, Sunday Telegraph

‘Excellent . . . perverse, funny and at times as inexplicably moving as its subject. Recommended’ – Fortean Times

‘Probably the most fun you’ll have with a British novel all year’ – The Edge
…thanks to Snoo for a great book.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. Made me laugh and cry. Excellent.’ – Sparky

‘. . . really good fun. It’s not very kind to old Crow, and the language is a bit more vulgar than required (or than he would have used), but on the other hand. . . it does produce a charming caricature of Ye Great Beast that serves to perpetuate the myth. …Dear 666 would have felt flattered… What I liked about the book, apart from its jokes and the invaluable occult illustrations, is the contrast between Crowley as a human being (and egomaniac) and the Master Therion, the perfect ego-less adept he would have liked to be . . . It’s the difference between a Thelemite and a follower of Crowleyanity. Symonds’ Great Beast was almost totally obsessed with the Demon Crowley, Wilson’s novel is better balanced, it mixes the ego tripper with the Logos of the Aeon. This produces some confusion, and maybe this confusion is close to the conflicts that the real AC experienced. I suspect that he often got muddles up as to who was who in him and who cares, and put on his Great Magus Hat whenever his ego felt threatened and misunderstood. Considering that so many people are involved in the dull cult of Crowleyanity, and spend their time trying to be like the guru or wasting money collecting the master’s underpants, a critical treatment of the person Crowley, such as you dared to inflict on the long-suffering public, is an excellent and much need magickal gesture.’ – Jan Fries

Images of Set

Featured

Changing Impressions of a multi-faceted God
Joan Ann Lansberry


Images of Set
Changing Impressions of a multi-faceted God
Joan Ann Lansberry
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-21-3
£15.00/US$24.00
Subjects: Ancient Egypt/Egyptology

Click HERE for Images of Set / USA & AUS

Click HERE for Images of Set / UK

The god Set (aka Seth) has been much of a puzzle to Egyptologists. If we go with the attitude of later Egyptians, we find Set blamed for every misfortune that can befall humanity. However, if we go with the attitude of earlier times, in particular the Ramesside period, when Egypt was at its peak in prosperity, we find a completely different picture. For we find a god who was very much adored. Most of the surviving imagery is from that period, although even in Ptolemaic and Roman times we occasionally find a piece that was a part of worship and magical rites. Set was always seen as ‘Great of Power’, even when he was feared. Putting all his imagery together, placing it in chronological context, sheds new light on the Dark god.

“Joan Lansberry is a place where three roads meet: solid academic research, strong talent as a working artist and a deep magical intuition for the magical current represented by Set. Her collection provides Keys to some doors long-unopened and will prove invaluable to the modern Left Hand Path. I’ll be thumbing through this book for years to come.”

Don Webb
High Priest of Set (Emeritus)

www.joanannlansberry.com

 

Initiate’s Way: A magical journey into spiritual alchemy

Featured

The Initiate’s Way

Jade Melany

ISBN 9781906958961,

260pp 23 colour images

Paperback £20.00 / $26.00

Hardback £30.00 / $35.00

Click Here for UK edition (paperback)

Click Here for UK edition (hardback)

Click HERE for USA & AUS (paperback)

Click HERE for USA & AUS (hardback)

For Kindle edition click HERE / UK

For Kindle edition click HERE / USA

Concise and complete instructions on how to create and use magical images and begin inner journeying, or walking the path of the Initiate.

This book will teach you how to internally work with each of the 22 magical archetypes so that you can perform spiritual alchemy on yourself and bring change into your life. Every conscious step you take into the Initiates Way is signposted by these magical images and as you take time to study, meditate with, and explore each of them, in turn, you will learn how to become your true and authentic self. This book contains full-colour plates of the 22 magical images which correlate with the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot, and they tell the archetypical story of the spiritual journey into enlightenment, and each image has an associated inner journey or path-working.

You can, as a solitary practitioner, use this book to learn how to build up magical images and tread each step of this amazing journey for yourself.

If you are working within a group or coven, you can use this as a guidebook for group creative visualisations, and at specific times during the year to align with the seasons. One of the group members can lead the others through each stage of the journey.

This path is not for the faint-hearted as it takes great strength and courage to become who you are truly meant to be.

“The Pathworkings match the Tarot deck, it is artistic alchemy that runs through them, mingling and transforming. When you have lots of pathworking experience it is so refreshing to meet something new that re-energizes and revitalises you” Cara Hamilton, Psychic Presenter.

“When working with Jade or any of this pathworking I find that the visualisation is not something I have to work to do, but that instead just comes to me with no effort, keeping my head and my heart space entirely free to explore my inner realms. This has led to clear healing imagery, and often genuinely breathtaking visuals which have given me an internal space to go and explore this beauty whenever I might wish to! Her energy was the first spark in a long life of darkness and has set me on the path to being who I always was but was too afraid to show.” Eleanor Petit

“Deeply engaging talks/readings, beautiful paintings and wonderful pathworking gently paced and flowing full of redolent imaginal experiences. On ‘The Way’, I feel I have learned a great deal and been inspired to seek to discover more. I particularly welcome the assistance afforded me to take an unaccustomed tack and thereby circumvent some of the obstacles to the insight that I had unwittingly placed before myself. Lesley Anne Brewster

“I first met Jade at a holistic fair where I had a reading done using her beautifully designed tarot cards (initiates way). The reading was so powerful, accurate and thought invoking that it reduced me to tears. It was like she had looked into my very soul and spoke to me on a spiritual level. She offered sensible suggestions and gave me sound advice, which was very apt for where I was at that time in my life. I have since been blown away by Jade’s wisdom and talent for a tarot reading and pathworking and I will continue to be guided by her on my journey of life ” Katrina Rourke

***

Katrina Rourke – Artist, Pathworking, tarot, initiate’s way, major arcana, creative, visualisation, inner, workings, journey, spiritual, alchemy, magickal, magical, images, fool, magician, priestess, god of the grove, goddess of the grove, shaman heirophant, self development, healing, lovers, chariot, strength, hermit, wheel, justice, drowned man, death, transformation, star, sothis, tower, Hermes, pan, sun, moon, judgement, world, serpent, esoteric, art


Isis

Featured

 

Isis, Goddess of Egypt & India
Mogg Morgan
ISBN: 978-1-906958-71-8,
£17.00/$26.00

Buy this book UK 

Buy this book USA & AUS

– A Temple of Isis in India –
On India’s, south-western or Malabar coast is situated an ancient Hindu temple which is these days devoted to the famous Hindu god Shiva and his consort the fearsome goddess Kali. This is Kurumbha-Bhagavathy Devi outside of the modern city of Cochin or Kochi in Kerala state.

Travel back in time and the temple housed other gods. Once it was the home of the Buddhist/Jaina goddess Pattini whose mortal husband was tried and killed in a series of brutal events still commemorated in the temple’s ritual year. Before this and the story gets even stranger, as there are said to be remains of a secret, underground shrine, the home to a mystery cult dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis.

At the time of Christ, there was indeed a Greco-Roman merchant colony based in this part of India. Greek, Roman & Near Eastern merchants travelled to India after a regular, if epic, sea journey of two thousand miles across the Arabian Ocean, making their first landfall at a port known in the ancient world as Musiris. Clues to the religious practices of these ancient traders is evident not just in the surviving architecture but in very many, sometimes unique features of the later cults, continuing into the modern-day.

Some of the best examples come from the rites of Pattini as once practised at Kurumba-Bhagavathy Devi. Experts have often identified the story of her husband’s death and resurrection, as something of the Near Eastern cult of Attis. But a more recent and credible theory is that the temple once hosted the mysteries of the cult of Isis, whose husband Osiris was also cruelly cut down but then resurrected by her magical prowess.

So without more ado let me tell the whole story from its beginnings on the banks of the Nile. The story of Isis and Osiris is the basis of Egypt’s most popular religion. In what follows I trace the origins of this to Egypt’s pyramid age in the middle of the second millennia BCE. Arguably it is even older. A great deal of this books is devoted to describing what is known about the cult of Isis and Osiris from Egyptian records. This, I shall argue, is the basis for what comes later in the timeline, when the world was dominated by the Greek and Roman Empires. Isis and Osiris became the focus of global religion and the basis of the most popular of all classical mystery cults. This is precisely the time at which a small, Near Eastern shrine was built in South-West India to service the needs of the merchant trading post. Mysteries of Isis were popular among all social classes in the ancient world, especially mariners.

In India, we have a building which could itself be thought of as storing the memory of influences from each new wave of belief. We can follow the progress and transformation of its changing occupants, as each absorbs some of the archaeological memory. Finally, we arrive at its current incarnation and the celebration of the Bharani festival, which marks the beginning of the hot summer before the coming of the Monsoon rains. Many non-orthodox rites will enliven the tale. The mysterious society of Atikals returns to their lost temple every year to conduct secret rites culminating in twelve hours of ‘Misrule’, during which hundreds of thousands of devotees appear from all over Kerala.

There are other devotees who carry sticks, which they swirl in their dancing; others brandish the sickle sword. Most of these pilgrims are non-Brahmin ritual specialists such as the Veliccappadu. Their name means “a channel who sheds light” for they are spirit mediums, men and women, followers of Kali who utter oracles when in trance. They dress in red and wear heavy anklets and bells.

In the final part of my story, I present a complete and ‘lost’ version of the most famous drama of all time, the celebrated myth of passion play of Isis and murdered husband Osiris, clearly recognizable even in its current idiom based as it is in South Asian ritual drama. The drama is reproduced in its entirety as it reveals many previously unknown aspects of one of the world’s oldest myths.

Isis: Goddess of Egypt & India (Extract)

Ithell Colquhoun

Featured

pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer and poet
(reprinted)
Eric Ratcliffe

cov9781869928988
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Ithell Colquhoun / UK / £30




——————————————————————-
Ithell Colquhoun / USA / US$40




——————————————————————-
Ithell Colquhoun
pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer & poet
Eric Ratcliffe
Format: Softcover/312pp/90 illustrations (25 colour).
ISBN: ISBN 978-1869928-98-8
£30/US$40
Subjects: Art/Art History/Surrealism/Occult/Magick/Biography.


The skills of Ithell Colquhoun in her main practice, that of artist and pioneer in this country of surrealistic art, have been long recognised. Additionally, other interests – alchemy, Earth-magic, active occultism, poetry, druidism, the pre-Christian pagan calendar, the history and membership of the Golden Dawn – and writing of and involvement in these interests by book publication and in a widely scattered field of correspondence, have created a miscellany of truly gargantuan proportion.

Eric Ratcliffe considered it was time to get together some of these pieces, to add something of what is known of Colquhoun’s early life and family history and to take the opportunity of listing a comprehensive calendar of her work and exhibitions. The result is neither strictly biographical nor a treatise on any one subject, but it is a first gathering of the roots, passions and multi-directions of this artist. It is a patchwork containing many launch-pads for exploration of the magical and mythical atmosphere which this artist existed in and created. Here therefore is a contribution towards solving a jigsaw and a wind-catch of the minor cyclones of lthell’s dedicatory interests, also serving as a record of her accomplishments in the art field.

REVIEWS

‘The subtitle of this book is: ‘Pioneer Surrealist, Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet’, this multifaceted description captures the essence of who and what Ithell Colquhoun was about. Her connection to Cornwall is through the book The Living Stones, published in 1957, which was an early contribution to discovering the power of the Cornish landscape, prehistory and tradition and folklore. Even today, it continues to inspire people with its love for the ancient land of Cornwall…Ratcliffe’s biography made me want to go back and re-read The Living Stones, and no better thing could be said of a book such as this.’- Cheryl Straffon, Editor in Meyn Mamvro – Ancient stones and sacred sites in Cornwall – www.meynmamvro.co.uk

‘The author gives an excellent account of Colquhoun’s artistic career, explaining why she has been so overlooked (she stuck to her principles against the authoritarian demands of the British surrealist clique and consequently was expelled). Ratcliffe places proper emphasis upon the artist’s magical activities. She was a member of the OTO, Order of the Pyramid and Sphinx, Order of Holy Wisdom, Ancient Celtic Church and the Druid Order.

Despite having had the good fortune to read many of Colquhoun’s magical papers I learnt a great deal from this very well informed work. There is excellent bibliographical information including listings of unpublished typescripts and also as comprehensive as possible listing of her paintings and drawings.’
Ithell Colquhoun by Eric Ratcliffe, Mandrake of Oxford.
Reviewed by Ben Fernee @ Caduceus Books

‘Ithell Colquhoun was a pioneer surrealist artist, poet, writer, pantheist and occultist. Descended from Devonian ancestry, she was of Anglo-Indian birth and received her education in England at the Cheltenham Ladies College and later at the Slade School of Art in London.

After the war she moved to Cornwall where she spent the rest of her life. While at the Slade she became involved in Theosophical circles and then attempted, without success, to join Moina Mathers’ Alpha and Omega Lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of the Inner Light.

However during the 1950s she belonged to various occult groups including Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian OTO and Nu-Isis Temple, Dr WB Crow’s Order of the Holy Wisdom and Order of the Keltic Cross, Tamara Bourkhoun’s Order of the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as well as the Druid Order, the Cornish and Breton Gorsedd, the Ancient Celtic Church, Co-Freemasonry and the Fellowship of Isis.


This biography is profusely illustrated with many of Colquhoun’s paintings and also includes some of her writings and poetry. It is a fascinating study of a unique multi-talented woman who during her creative life contributed a great deal to both the artistic and occult fields. Recommended.’
Ithell Colquhoun, by Eric Ratcliffe.
Reviewed by Mike Howard in The Cauldron, issue 129, August 2008

JACK THE RIPPER IN FACT AND FICTION

Robin Odell
(Ripperology) (True Crime) (Criminology)

Jack The Ripper in Fact and Fiction
Robin Odell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1869928-308
£15.00 / US $24.00
Subjects: Ripperology / True Crime / Criminology.

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA edition

In the autumn of 1888, the streets of London were streets of terror. The cause – is a series of mysterious and apparently motiveless murders.

Respectable citizens cowered behind shuttered windows and multi-locked doors. Ironically, however, it was not respectable who were in danger.

The victims were all drawn from the trade which necessity still compelled to haunt dark alleys and doorways in dead of night – the prostitutes.

Theories on the identity of the murderer have been many and various: that he was a fashionable doctor, even that he was a she – a midwife.

Robin Odell has produced an absorbing factual reconstruction of all the crimes and a brilliant new theory, based on modern methods of detection,to solve the greatest mystery in British criminology. Most readers will accept his theory as the long-sought answer to a baffling real-life whodunit, as the most likely epitaph on a terror known as JACK THE RIPPER IN FACT AND FICTION.

***

RESOURCES FOR CRIME & RIPPEROLOGY SPECIALISTS

Featuring: True Crime & Ripperology Conferences, Conventions, Seminars, Lectures, Moots, Forums, Societies, Crime Writers Guilds, Journals, Books, Media, Archives, Museums, Tours, Walks, Murder Mysteries, Detective Fiction.

LORETTA LAY
– is a Specialist Detective Fiction and True Crime Bookdealer and a leading authority on Jack The Ripper.
www.laybooks.com
*****

MURDER ONE UK
– Murder One UK is an online, mail order only bookseller and a successor to the famous Murder One bookshop that traded in the heart of Charing Cross Road for over twenty years.
www.murderone.co.uk
*****

CASEBOOK
– is the Web’s largest public Jack The Ripper Archive.
www.casebook.org
*****

JACK THE RIPPER FORUMS
– The place to be for all things Ripper.
www.jtrforums.com
*****

RIPPEROLOGIST
– The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies, is available in electronic format on subscription.
www.ripperologist.co.uk
*****

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
– Karyo Magellan’s website dedicated to Jack The Ripper.
www.karyom.com/The%20Whitechapel%20Murders.htm
*****

THE WHITECHAPEL SOCIETY 1888
– organize conferences, lectures, moots and tours on Jack The Ripper.
www.whitechapelsociety.com
*****

THE MUSEUM OF CRIME
www.themuseumofcrime.com
*****

JACK THE RIPPER WALK
www.jacktheripperwalk.com
*****

THE JACK THE RIPPER TOUR
www.thejacktherippertour.com
*****

JACK THE RIPPER TOUR
www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com
*****

CRIME & INVESTIGATION NETWORK
www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk
*****

MYSTERY WRITERS of AMERICA
www.mysterywriters.org
*****

RIPPER STREET / BBC TV series (DVDs)
– Haunted by the failure to catch Londonʼs most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) now heads up the notorious H Division – the toughest police district in the East End. Charged with keeping order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his men fi nd themselves fi ghting to uphold justice and the rule of law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper – is he back for another reign of terror. The shadow of the Ripper is still felt in the neighbourhood by the vigilantes, the sensation-seeking newspaper hacks and the men who hunted – and failed to find – the notorious murderer. It seems that even though the notorious killer has disappeared, there are plenty more willing to stain the streets of Whitechapel with their victims’ blood…
*****

Jesus The Sorcerer

Robert Conner

Jesus The Sorcerer
Robert Conner
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1869928-957
£15.00+p&p / US$24.00+p&p
Subjects: Christian Magic/Religious Studies.

Click HERE for the UK edition

Click HERE for USA & Elsewhere

The most complete summation to date of the New Testament evidence for magical practice by Jesus and the early Christians. The very notion of Jesus being a sorcerer runs so against the grain of the Western cultural myth that even non-Christians are likely to find it far-fetched or even vaguely disturbing. Nevertheless, scholars steadily accumulated evidence for magical practices in the New Testament throughout much of the 20th century. It is that ever-expanding body of knowledge that has made this book possible. This book examines the following: The nature of the earliest Christian documents, the defects of their transmission, and the evidence for the suppression of descriptions of magical acts.

The closely related problem of the New Testament accounts as historical sources.

The radically apocalyptic nature of Jesus’ message and the expectations of the early church.

The failure of the apocalypse to occur and the theological reaction to that failure.

The role of magic and mystery religion in early Christianity.

A revisiting of the story of the “beloved disciple” and what it may tell us about Jesus and suppression of evidence about his life.

 

Journal for the Academic Study of Magic 1-4

A wide and deep view of magic – rating 9.’ Fortean Times 176

‘A must-read for all those interested in an academic approach to the magical arts.’ The Cauldron

JSM1
ISBN 978-1869928-674
Format: Softcover/200 pages.
ISSN 1479-0750
£20/US$40

Click HERE for JSM1 / UK

Click HERE for JSM1 / USA

Contents
Beyond Attribution: The Importance of Barrett’s Magus/Alison Butler

Shadow over Philistia: A review of the Cult of Dagon/John C. Day

A History of Otherness: Tarot and Playing Cards from Early Modern Europe /Joyce Goggin

Opposites Attract: magical identity and social uncertainty / Dave Green

‘Memories of a sorcerer’: notes on Gilles Deleuze-Felix Guattari, Austin Osman Spare and Anomalous Sorceries. / Matt Lee

Le Streghe Son Tornate: The Reappearance of Streghe in Italian American Queer Writings/Ilaria Serra

Controlling Chance, Creating Chance: Magical Thinking in Religious Pilgrimage / Deana Weibel


JSM2
ISBN 978-1869928-725
Format:Softcover/410 pp.
ISSN 1479-0750
UK £20/US$40

Click HERE for JSM2 / UK

Click HERE for JSM2 / USA

‘8 out of 10 – A bit of magic dust sprinkled over academe’ – Fortean Times
Contents
Alien Selves: Modernity and the Social Diagnostics of the Demonic in ‘Lovecraftian Magick’:/ Woodman

Wishful Thinking Notes towards a psychoanalytic sociology of Pagan magic: /Green

A Shell with my Name on it: The Reliance on the Supernatural During the First World War. /Chambers

The Metaphysical Relationship between Magic and Miracles: /Morgan Luck

Demonic Possession, and Spiritual Healing in Nineteenth-Century Devon:/ Semmens

Human Body in Southern Slavic Folk Sorcery:/ Filipovic & Rader

Four Glasses Of Water:/ Snell

The Land Near the Dark Cornish Sea:/ Hale

Kenneth Grant and the Magickal revival:/ Evans

Magic through the Linguistic Lenses of Greek mágos, Indo-European *mag(h)-, Sanskrit màyà and Pharaonic Egyptian heka:/ Cheak

The symbolism of the pierced heart: Froome/Nicholas Roerich:/ McCannon
/ Book Review, etc.
Reviews of JSM2
‘After being dunked in a cauldron of magic potion, the JASM now has classier paper, a larger format and bigger type and has grown to almost 400 pages.
The 12 articles further the Journal’s remit to present and promote new academic writing, thinking and research on all aspects of the subject, and demonstrate again just how broad this ever-expanding field is. One would have to have completed courses in ancient history, anthropology, religious studies, linguistics, philosophy, post-modernism, art, literature, folklore, the sciences and quite probably mathematics to properly assess the material here.
So, as a film studies graduate, I feel perfectly placed to pass comment…
Articles include: an anthropological insider’s look at a troupe of archly post-modem HP Lovecraft- inspired magicians, and their relationship to our world and that of The Great Old Ones, as experienced through guided meditations and dead-of-night possession rituals; magic,superstition and supernatural belief in the trenches of WWI; the evolution of Tintagel as a mystical Celtic pilgrimage site; an overview of the Russian mystic and artist Nicholas Roerich; a critical deconstruction of Kenneth Grant’s oozy oeuvre; witchcraft in 19th century Devon; libertarian magical iconoclast Lionel Snell (aka Ramsey Dukes) on cultures of scepticism and belief, and more besides. Diverse materials, then, people who really know their stuff.

The Journal is not entirely unproblematic, however. most of the pieces are clearly and engagingly written, one or two are o presented in awkward academese; S in others, one’s eyes can hardly move for the tangle of footnotes scattered across the page. Perhaps my gripes are with the academe itself, but if JASM seeks wider readership, these issues wort considering. Otherwise, another fine emission.’
– Mark Pilkington, Fortean Times

The Pentacle 13
‘Don’t be put off by the academic titles these articles are well worth reading whatever your path and I can’t wait for Issue 3. – rated 5 Pentacles’


JSM3
ISBN 978-1869928-964
Format: Softcover/300 pp.
£20/US$40

Click HERE for JSM3 / UK

Click HERE for JSM3 / USA

JSM3 – Drs Dave Green (University of the West of England, UK) and Susan Johnston Graf (Penn State, Mont Alto, USA) are taking over as co-editors of the journal.
We wish to thank Dave Evans, founding editor, for all his wonderful work in getting the journal up and running and establishing its reputation. The new editors are also pleased to announce that Mandrake is continuing its involvement with the journal as publishers.
Contents:
Amy Lee – A Language of Her Own: Witchery as a New Language of Female Identity
Dave Green – Creative Revolution: Bergsonisms and Modern Magic
Hannah Sanders – Buffy and Beyond: Language and Resistance in Contemporary Teenage Witchcraft
Mary Hayes – Discovering the Witch’s Teat: Magical Practices, Medical Superstitions in The Witch of Edmonton
Penny Lowery – The Re-enchantment of the Medical: An examination of magical elements in healing.
Jonathan Marshall – Apparitions, Ghosts, Fairies, Demons and Wild Events: Virtuality in Early Modern Britain
Kate Laity – Living the Mystery: Sacred Drama Today
Research Articles:
David Geall – ‘A half-choked meep of cosmic fear’ Is there esoteric symbolism in H.P.Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath?
Susan Gorman – Becoming a Sorcerer: Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart and the Magic of Deleuzian and Guattarian Becoming
Book Reviews


JSM4
ISBN 978-1869928-391
Format: Softcover/400 pp.
£20/US$40

Click HERE for JSM4 / UK

Click HERE for JSM4 / USA

Contents
The Practitioner, The Priest, and The Professor: Perspectives on Self-Initiation in the American Neopagan Community/Laubach, Martinie’ and Clemons/
The Trinity of the Hebrew Goddess: A Guided Presentation Of Goddess Narratives and Submerged Beliefs : DeMente
The Topography of Magic in the Modern Western and Ancient Egyptian Minds : Stannish
The science of magic: A parapsychological model of psychic ability in the context of magical will : Luke
Is Magic Possible Within A Quantum Mechanical Framework? : Ash
Angels with Nanotech Wings: Magic, Medicine and Technology in The Neuromancer and Brain Plague : Lord
Rowling’s Devil: Ancient Archetype or Modern Manifestation? : Lauren Berman
“Delivered From Enchantment”: Cotton Mather, W. B. O. Peabody, and the Struggle against Magic : Sederholm
In a Mirror, Darkly : A comparison between the Lovecraftian Mythos and African-Atlantic mystery religions : Geall
The Journey of The Lion King and the Collective Unconscious : Marsh
The Third Time’s the Charm”: Mythic Operative Magic in the Merseburger Zaubersprüche : Moynihan
The Old Irish Impotence Spell: The Dam Díli, Fergus, Fertility, and the Mythic Backround of an Irish Incantation : Bernhardt-House
Reading the Turkish Coffee Cup and Beyond: The Case of North Cyprus : Karimova
Reviews
Issue 5 is now seeking contributions. Scholarly articles in English about any aspect of magic/occultism are welcome up to 8000 words in length.
Submission to the journal is by Email attachment, in Rich Text Format documents using Harvard Citation Style. Full submission details, an outline style guide can be found here
http://www.sasm.co.uk/styleguide.html
Could all submissions now be sent to Dave Green David2.Green@uwe.ac.uk
Please feel free to contact Dave or Susan – sjg9@psu.edu – about the suitability of any proposed article, but in principle we aim to be as inclusive as possible, welcoming submissions from any academic discipline concerning any aspect of magic/occultism from any geographic region in any historical period. Academic articles from magical practitioners are also encouraged.
Deadline for submissions is 21st June 2006, with early submissions welcome.
Society for Academic Study of Magic – elist
The Academic Study Magic e-list is back by popular demand. The list is now being managed and moderated by Amy Hale and myself, Dave Green. We felt that the list, despite its difficulties and personality clashes, was a valuable and exciting resource for academics and others interested in all forms of magical practice from any period of history, any geographic area and any disciplinary background. The new moderators will not tolerate the flaming of old and want to foster an open and tolerant attitude to what will always be an interdisciplinary topic with many divergent views – long may it stay so and let us learn from these differences.
If you wish to join you can do so at this url:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC.html
It might take a little time to recapture the old momentum of the list, but in the meantime we can start reacquainting ourselves so please feel free to post an introduction once you have joined and let’s see the academic magic phoenix rise from the ashes …
Please feel free to circulate this to any relevant lists and individuals.



JSM5
Format: Softcover
£20/US$40

Click HERE for JSM5 / UK

Click HERE for JSM5 / USA

JSM5 : Contents
Flavius Josephus’ Terminology of Magic: Accommodating
Jewish Magic to a Roman Audience, / Philip Jewell

The Role of Grimoires in the Conjure Tradition / Dan Harms

Hermetic/Cabalistic Ritual in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus /
Dana Winters

Italian Cunning Craft: Some Preliminary Observations / Sabina Magliocco

Walking The Tightrope: A Study Of Secret Astrologers In Mainstream
Professions / J.A. Silver Frost

Martyrs, Magic, and Christian Conversion / Patrick Maille

“Worshiping the Devil in the Name of God”Anti-Semitism,
Theosophy and Christianity in the Occult Doctrines of Pekka Siitoin /
Kennet Granholm

“The Witching Hour: Sex Magic in 1950s Australia” / Marguerite Johnson

Reviews

Obituaries

Journal for the Academic Study of Magic 5

JSM5
Format: Softcover
£20/US$40


Click HERE for JSM /UK

Click HERE for JSM / USA

JSM5: Contents
Flavius Josephus’ Terminology of Magic: Accommodating
Jewish Magic to a Roman Audience, / Philip Jewell

The Role of Grimoires in the Conjure Tradition / Dan Harms

Hermetic/Cabalistic Ritual in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus /
Dana Winters

Italian Cunning Craft: Some Preliminary Observations / Sabina Magliocco

Walking The Tightrope: A Study Of Secret Astrologers In Mainstream
Professions / J.A. Silver Frost

Martyrs, Magic, and Christian Conversion / Patrick Maille

“Worshiping the Devil in the Name of God ”Anti-Semitism,
Theosophy and Christianity in the Occult Doctrines of Pekka Siitoin /
Kennet Granholm

“The Witching Hour: Sex Magic in 1950s Australia” / Marguerite Johnson

Reviews

Obituaries

Kaos Hieroglyphica

Anton Channing


Kaos Hieroglyphica
Anton Channing
Format: Hardback Case Laminated.
ISBN:
£19.99/US$35
Subjects: Chaos Magick


‘Mr Channing plays Trotsky to my Lenin, and Luther to the most holy of Chaos Orthodoxies.’ – Pete Carroll

In the year 1564, Dr John Dee published his work, Monas Hieroglyphica. Its central symbol represented the unity which was the gnosis of the monotheistic aeon.

Now over four hundred years later, Anton Channing has published his long awaited debut work Kaos Hieroglyphica, within which he expounds a new symbol, the Kaos Hieroglyph. This symbol represents the plurality and freedom of the New Aeon. This work of magical alchemy draws on such diverse material as Thelema, the Chaos Current, the Maat Current, Timothy Leary, Witchcraft, Paganism, the Hermetic Tradition, Taoism, Shamanism and the author’s own Pineal Gland.

The Kaos Hieroglyphica offers the reader interpretations of Hermetic symbolism in a way that is both insightful and relevant to New Aeon Magic.

Contents
Forward by Jaq D Hawkins
0. Introduction
1. The Cybermorphic Kaosphere System
2. Pure Magick
3. Duality
4. Elemental Magick
5. The Eight Colours of Magick
6. The Kaos Hieroglyph
Appendix A – Aeonics
Appendix B – Eight Circuit Model
Appendix C – Training Programme
Appendix D – Divination
Appendix E – Kaobala

Peter J Carroll. December ’04:
Infamy! Infamy! Anton has surely got it in for me, in these two hundred pages of relentless revisionism. Here we see heresy of the most outrageous kind, Mr Channing plays Trotsky to my Lenin, and Luther to the most holy of Chaos Orthodoxies.

Methinks I may excommunicate him with extreme prejudice for revealing the secret asymmetries and imbalances in my Eight Magics which have propelled me to global notoriety, undeserved riches, and domination of the metaphysical realms.

May Baphomet dam his loins and may Eris make his balls explode, for he hath proposed a counter-reformation back into the antique concepts of soul, ‘being’, and symbo-realism.

He even proposes, and mark this, an alternative order completely lacking even the most basic dominance hierarchy, terrible secrets, and bloodcurdling initiation rites, yet he seems such a reasonable guy.

I have arranged to have a drink with him to see where it all went new-age shaped.

In the meantime read the book, I found it both provocative and entertaining but I have to warn you about the shockingly high ‘is’ count. That in itself provides a key to the symbolistic conceptual style of the author.

Khemetic Enochian Chess

Featured

Hypermodern Magick

(Enochian Chess Series Vol. II)

Steve Nichols

Khemetic Enochian Chess
Hypermodern Magick
Steve Nichols
Illustrations many in colour.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-86-2
US$39.99 / UK£30.00

Click Here for Khemetic Enochian Chess / USA & Elsewhere

Click Here for Khemetic Enochian Chess / UK

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only £70.00 free postage / UK

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only $90.00 free postage USA

Elsewhere, write for discount details and invoice

Khemetic Chess (Hypermodern Magick) is a stand-alone book that outlines my theory of magick, and sheds light on ‘active divinatory’ Enochian Chess. Exploring the 64 (8×8) paradigm, it looks at both historical and recent Enochian Chess variants. Aleister Crowley features prominently; and I look at strong Khemetic strands in Thelema such as the Crowning of Horus. It also encompasses Tantra, and Tsakli pieces (moveable shrines) for “No Self” Enochian Chess.

This book explains how 88 Ptolemaic emblemata gave birth to familiar Christianised tarot designs. These 88 divide into four groups of 22 Atous, and these combine with the Minor Arcanaii of the Four Winds, 56 divination cards for each of the 4 Elements or Chessboards. Four packs of 78 “Tarot of the Four Worlds.”

Khem, ancient Egypt, seems to be the fount of many magickal practices and survivals in diverse cultures. I trace some Khemetic influences on Tibetan Bonpo and Hinduism. Essential components and structure from Kabbalah also seem to begin with the Khemetic game of Zenet, and the Hymn to the Ten Bau of Amen-Ra rather than with such texts as Sepher Yetzirah and Zohar of the Late Medieval Period. Horus, Isis and the other Great Ones of Khem work better under governance of the Tetragrammaton (word with four letters) “AMEN” rather than under the arguably anti-Kemetic, Tetragrammaton YHVH.

Hypermodern Magick explains, continues and augments innovations that began with the literary modernist and psychological experimenter, WB Yeats and continued with political surrealist, Ithell Colquhoun, and Don Kraig (Modern Magick).

Steve Nichols’ fully featured Windows ENOCHIAN CHESS SOFTWARE for one to four players can be downloaded by using the coupon code instructions inside together with evidence of purchase. The PC software makes this advanced and complex game immediately playable. Steve Nichols was the first to publish Enochian Chess sets in 1982 with support from Israel Regardie and others. Steve has given many demonstrations, readings and lectures about the game over the decades.


THE ENOCHIAN CHESS SOFTWARE CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM chaturanga.co

 

Living Midnight

Three Movements of The Tao
Jan Fries

Living Midnight
Three Movements of The Tao
Jan Fries
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-869928-50-6
£15.00 /US$24.00
Subjects: Magick/I Ching/Taoism.

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In this book, you will find a study of the divination system known widely as the I Ching, but here presented with all its magick intact and in a totally unique way. This leads naturally to an examination of the techniques of Taoist meditation and finally to a look at the divine entities that lie behind the system – the Immortals.

Anyone who has read Jan Fries’s inspiring books – Helrunar, Visual Magick and especially Seidways: Shaking, Swaying And Serpent Mysteries, cannot have failed to notice some of the magical techniques of the east and of the Taoist tradition are very close to his heart. Here you will find many practical exercises, I Ching divination in the mind, breathing experiences and visualisation of coloured vapours.

‘You can find the Immortals exploring the hidden delights of enchanted fairy grottoes, flower gardens, pine forests and pleasant autumn lakes. They walk on clouds, they sit in shady valleys enjoying the swirling mists and rest in the heart of the living midnight. You can meet them in the centre of yourself once you become empty enough. And you can meet them out here, walking in the world, disguised as mortals.’


‘May the high-born reader cast a benign and forgiving eye on this work, experiment with its humble methods and come to a higher understanding of the mysterious workings of the Tao.’ – Jan Fries

Luban

Featured

A Chinese Grimoire of Magic

496pp, 154x234mm. Over 200 illustrations 

978-1-914153-19-8

Publication Date: 21/9/23

Translation and commentary by Jason. E. Read

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Special Edition hardback Stamped by the author £75 / $90 (include p&p)

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or add order two and we will confirm with you before refunding any excess postage etc


Introduction

The Luban Shu or the ‘Book of Luban’ or even the ‘Luban Classic’ is well known to the Chinese-speaking occult community. The book has the same or similar reputation as the Key of Solomon among Western practitioners of magic, and at one time nearly every village had a local magician, a ‘fangshi’ who was skilled in the Luban technique, and everyone, in older times, had a tale to tell about the Luban.

The Luban was, and is, both loved and dreaded by the Chinese. Luban is at first appearance a collection of spells gathered into one volume along with information about the magical aspects of feng shui. Obviously, the text was meant for the well-educated magus as some of the spells concern complex notions of Chinese astrology and geometry as well as the procedures of magic in itself. The origin of the text is shrouded in mystery and a number of versions circulated throughout China.

What makes the Luban so attractive is that it is free of the dogma of orthodox religious Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. And yet it relies on their principles in a certain folk manner, much, in the same way, the grimoires of the West implied a Christian or Judaic worldview. The Luban thus represents a means for the individual sorcerer to seek a pathway to power within a personal context and without having to limit themselves to the orthodox temples.

This was a book for the outsider, the sorcerer who was also a scholar of the deepest and most profound mysteries of magic. Another attractive element was that there was no need for rare and exotic ingredients that are impossible to access and have lost their meaning to the modern mind. The Luban Shu is ancient but a LIVING tradition. Its gods and spirits are not only alive and well, throughout millions of Temples and shrines in Asia, but are part of the land, the rocks, the trees, the running waters and so forth.

It is not a speculative tradition which tries to piece together fragments from long-lost practices that exist in broken papyri and attempt at a working tradition. Side by side with the text there is also an oral tradition of transmitted knowledge. We do not need to resort to often subjective reconstructionism to attempt a revival of a lost tradition.
In this text, therefore, we give not only the text itself with notes on obscure terms, but actual oral teachings from my own teacher Dr. Liang.

For scholars, it will be an interesting cultural source for the sorcerous magic outside of the main Dao stream. For many, it will be a teacher of a definite Way. If you choose this practical side, we urge you to follow all the oral advice and taboos and make a careful study of the initiation into the Luban Pai.

In the Luban system, you must first enter its stream before it can work for you. The spells in the Luban must also be carefully cultivated. It is a myth that one can pick a random spell and hey presto it works. On average a spell must be PRACTISED many times before it can actually work. You will also see in the oral commentary there is inner work to do, some of which will be familiar to practitioners of more profound schools of neigong, as opposed to qigong.

Jason Read 2022
Year of the Tiger.

Magic in Christianity

Featured

From Jesus to Gnosticism
Robert Conner

Magic in Christianity
From Jesus to Gnosticism
Robert Conner
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-61-9
£15.00+p&p / US$25+p&p
Subjects: Religious Studies/Gnosticism/Magic.

Click HERE for the UK edition

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The world of Jesus and the early Christians swarmed with prophets and exorcists, holy men and healers, who invoked angels and demons, gods and ghosts. Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics explores that world through the surviving texts of the first Christians and their pagan and Jewish contemporaries.

Ecstatic spirit possession, handing opponents over to Satan, sending demons into swine, striking others dead on the spot by pronouncing curses, using articles of clothing and parts of corpses to perform magical healing and exorcism, invoking ghosts and angels for protection—these are all ancient Christian practices described in the New Testament, explained in detail by early Christian writers, and preserved by Christian amulets.

Pagans and Jews accused Jesus and his followers of practicing magic and Christians accused one another of sorcery. Both pagan and early orthodox writers describe the rituals of the gnostic sects in detail, including the magical passwords required to cross through the gates of the lower heavens.

Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics examines evidence from the New Testament, the first Christian apologists, early apocryphal works, curse tablets and amulets to reconstruct the apocalyptic magical world of Jesus and the first Christians.

“a compelling and striking exemplar of why independent scholarship is such an important facet of the academic studies…Recommended.”
– Dale Evans, Ph.D., review of Jesus the Sorcerer, Journal for the Academic Study of Magic.

“a fascinating and thought provoking read…one of the most learned works I have had the opportunity to read in this genre.”
– Eric W. Northway, Ph.D., review of Magic in the New Testament, The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies.

 

Magic in The New Testament

A survey and appraisal of the evidence
Robert Conner

Magic in The New Testament
A survey and appraisal of the evidence
Robert Conner
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1906958-275
£15.00+p&p / US$25.00+p&p

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Early Christians were accused of practising magic by Jews, Pagans, and other Christians. Magic in the New Testament examines magical praxis common to the New Testament, the magical papyri, the Sepher Ha-Razim, the Book of Enoch, the apocryphal Acts and the pre-Nicene church fathers and surveys the professional literature on early Christian magic.

Additional topics include:

magic, family and sexuality /

the Old Testament background of early Christian magic /

the relationship between magic and apocalypticism /

veneration of relics and necromantic sorcery /

resurrection, ghost stories and polymorphism /

magic and mystery cult in early Christianity.

 

 

 

Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg

Jean Overton Fuller
(Magical Biography)

Dylan1936The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg
Jean Overton Fuller
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Biography/Aleister Crowley/Thelema/Magick.

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The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg is really two books in one:
The record of Victor Neuburg’s extraordinary journey to magical enlightenment.         And the story of Aleister Crowley, the magus who summoned Neuburg to join
him in his quest.

‘The book opens with the author’s entry into the group of young poets including Dylan Thomas and Pamela Hansford Johnson. They gather around Victor Newburg in 1935 when he is the poetry editor of the Sunday Referee. Gradually the author becomes aware of his strange and sinister past, in which Neuburg was associated in magick with Aleister Crowley.

Contents: Beginnings / Mystic of the Agnostic Journal / Crowley and the Golden Dawn / Initiation / Magical Retirement / Equinox and Algeria / Rites of Eleusis / Triumph of Pan / Desert / Triangles / Moon Above the Tower / Templars and the Tradition of Sheikh El Djebel / Paris Working / The Sanctuary / Arcanum Arcanorum / Dylan Thomas


REVIEWS
Recently I found myself in Oxford on other business and met up with Mogg Morgan of Mandrake of Oxford Press, always a pleasure to talk to him about books and magic! During a chat about Aleister Crowley’s poetry, Mogg mentioned Victor Neuberg and reminded me this book is in Mandrake’s catalogue.
I was really glad to pick up my copy, which I’m enjoying very much at the moment. A good addition to my research library on occult literary modernism, it starts with an account of Victor Neuberg’s life in 1930s London as poetry editor of The Sunday Referee and the circle of young poets and writers whom he nurtured (including Dylan Thomas, Pamela Hansford Johnson and Jean Overton Fuller herself).
The book then switches to Jean Overton Fuller’s search for the truth about Victor’s magical association with Aleister Crowley. It’s a fascinating literary detective story – oh for the days (1960s) when a carefully-placed letter in the press would result in invites to tea with people who were personally involved!
In what is effectively a double magical biography, she pieces together Crowley and Neuberg’s journey on foot into the Sahara to perform rituals and then their ‘Paris Workings’, which prove to be dangerous and challenging.
Jean is a sympathetic and intuitive writer, providing a compelling portrait of Victor Neuberg and his literary/magical circles, not holding back on her critical comments on aspects of Crowley’s behaviour (eg abandoning Neuberg alone in the desert!), but appreciating the nature of his work and honouring the enduring love Neuberg maintained for Crowley. Reading this, I think I’d have really enjoyed meeting Victor Neuberg.
– Sue Terry, May 2023

‘Those interested in Western occult history will welcome this revised and expanded edition of an important work first published in 1965.

Overton Fuller’s biography of Neuburg paints an intimate portrait of this complex character who was as much mystic as poet. A prominent figure in London’s literary bohemia in the 1930s, Neuburg encouraged such writers as Dylan Thomas, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Hugo Manning and many others, including Overton Fuller.

In his earlier days, Neuburg had been a disciple, magical partner and possibly even lover of Aleister Crowley during a period of ground-breaking magical experiments.

‘Vicky encouraged me as no one else has done,’ Dylan Thomas declared on hearing of Neuburg’s death. ‘He possessed many kinds of genius, and not the least was his genius for drawing to himself, by his wisdom, graveness, great humour and innocence, a feeling of trust and love, that won’t ever be forgotten.’ ‘ . . . there was a whiff of sulphur abroad, and all of us would have liked to know the truth of the Aleister Crowley’s legends, the truth of the witch-like baroness called Cremers, the abandonment of Neuburg in the desert.’

– Pamela Hansford Johnson

‘No dry biography this but an illuminating and compelling account of a multi-faceted personality who lived during an exciting period of occult and literary history. An absolute must-have!’
– (ME) In Prediction Magazine November 2005

—————————–

To mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas, here’s an extract from JOF’s book that narrates her first meeting with the soon-to-be-famous poet:

“We agreed to Zoists”: Dylan Thomas & the Occultist Victor Neuburg (Aleister Crowley’s lover & collaborator)

“We agreed to Zoists.

Runia wanted us to have badges, ‘so that one Zoist can recognize another, if you meet outside, or if we have provincial centres.’

There was a murmur of dissent. Some of us felt this thing was getting inflated. And we didn’t want badges. We weren’t boy scouts; just a few people who wanted to come here and sit and talk to each other on Saturday evenings.

‘All right, no badges,’ she said. ‘But it is agreed we have a name?’

It was agreed but there was no enthusiasm for the name, our feeling being for the informal. Before we left Runia made us cups of tea.

When eventually we broke up, and I stood again in the road outside, I felt I could tell my mother I had been among distinguished people. But the truth was I felt something else as well. I felt I had been in ancient Egypt and for this feeling I could find no explanation.

Not all of those who had been present on the first evening returned the following Saturday, but as I attended every week I began to know the regulars. Arriving soon after 8 (dinner at the hotel where my mother and I lived, was at 7, so it was a rush), I always found a certain number of people there already, though there was usually some time to wait until Vicky and Runia came from the inner room. It was in this waiting time that I had to find my feet, as it were among the other young ones. Nobody was ever introduced at Vicky’s. One just found out for oneself. I did not find the young men easy although they made efforts to draw me into the circle, for they assumed an acquaintance with modern poetry and political authors greater than I possessed; I could not always follow their allusions, and I had the feeling they all participated in a form of culture slightly strange to me. I was therefore grateful when a good looking young man, quiet mannered and of a more ordinarily civilized demeanour, settled himself beside me and asked, simply, ‘How did you come to Vicky’s?’

I told him about the circular letter I had received. He knew Geoffrey Lloyd had sent some out and asked, ‘What do you do when you’re not writing poems for Vicky? What’s your background, so to speak?’

I told him I had been on the stage since I was seventeen.
He said ‘Fancy our having an actress among us!’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘William Thomas’, was what I first thought he said, but then he added, ‘It’s a special Welsh name.’
There could be nothing very special about William, and I puckered my brows.
‘You’ll never have heard it before,’ he said. ‘Nobody in England ever has. It should really be pronounced Wullam, in Welsh.’ Or was he saying ‘Dullan’?

‘It’s a special Welsh name,’ he repeated. ‘I shall have to spell it for you. D-Y-L-A-N. In Wales, it’s pronounced Dullan. But I’d been corresponding with Vicky for some time before I came to London, and when I arrived I found he had been calling me Dillan, in his mind. I thought if Vicky didn’t know how to pronounce it nobody in England would, so I decided to take it as the standard English pronunciation of my name. Otherwise I’d spend all my time telling people it was Dull and not Dill, and I think perhaps Dillan sounds more elegant than Dullan. Only Idris objects and thinks it’s frightfully fancy! Because he’s Welsh, too, and he knows! but now I’m getting even Idris trained to call me Dillan, though it’s under protest!’
‘What part of Wales do you come from?’ I said.

‘Oh, I only come from a small town. Swansea.’

Whereas I had previously felt myself to be the most naive member of a group otherwise composed of sophisticated, bohemian intellectuals, I now felt I had, vis-à-vis Dylan Thomas, at any rate, an advantage in being a Londoner. ‘I should have thought Swansea was a large town,’ I said. ‘I was near there all last summer. If you had been to the theatre at Porthcawl you would have seen me on the stage!’

‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t’ he said. ‘What a pity!’

Giving the conversation a turn he did not expect, I said, ‘Have you ever been down a mine?’
‘No.’

‘I have!’ I explained triumphantly. ‘Near Crumlin. I once played a January date in the Rhondda. Or more exactly the Ebbw Vale.’ I told him how I had persuaded the men at a pit to take me down the shaft, and how, having arrived at the bottom, I was given a lamp to hold and escorted along a passage which had been hewed through the coal to a point where it became so low that one would have had to proceed on hands and knees. I was shown a fault seam, which I felt with my fingers.

‘You have seen something in Wales which I haven’t!’ said Dylan. He explained that his home was some distance from the mining regions. He described the part of Swansea where he lived, with a detail I cannot now recall, except that it sounded salubrious and agreeable. His father was Senior English Master at the Grammar School. ‘Living where I do one doesn’t really see anything of all that,’ he said, with reference to my allusion to the coal mining (and depressed) areas. ‘Idris comes from the Rhondda,’1 he said. ‘I haven’t been into those areas.’ As though he had been slightly shamed by my adventure, he added, ‘Perhaps I ought to have done.’

‘It’s because you live there that you wouldn’t think of it,’ I said. ‘When one is touring one feels one must see everything in case one never comes again. When I was sixteen, my mother and I made a tour of Italy, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Capri, and back through Perugia, Florence and Milan. We felt we had to go into everything, even the smallest church we passed on any street. We realized we had never “done” London half as thoroughly because we took it for granted.’

I have no ‘outrageous’ sayings of Dylan Thomas to record. His conversation with me was perfectly drawing-room and unexceptional. I remember him as a polite young man. Friendly, but not at all presuming.
He told me the origins of the circle of which I now formed part. ‘First one and then another of us found our way to Vicky’s through entering into correspondence with him or something like that, and so a circle grew up around Vicky. We’re all very fond of Vicky.’ He explained that, ‘always reading each other’s names in print we began to wonder what the ones whom we hadn’t seen were like.’ So they had had the idea ‘of sending out circulars to everybody who was a contributor. He thought it had brought in some interesting people. ‘Well, it has brought you!’ Perhaps one could name some kind of a regular thing of it. ‘The only thing I don’t like is the name Zoists!’ he said.

I laughed and said, ‘It does sound a bit like protozoa, zoophytes and zoids!’

Dylan pulled a funny face.

‘We’re always called “Vicky’s children”,’ said Dylan. ‘It’s a bit sentimental, but I don’t think we shall ever be called anything else.’

It had been at the back of my mind while he was speaking that his name, as he had spelled it out, was one which I had read in the Sunday Referee in a context more important than that of the weekly prizes. I had not taken the paper regularly before I joined the circle, or I would have known the whole build-up. I said, ‘Aren’t you the winner of a big prize? I believe you’re one of the distinguished people here!’
‘It was through Vicky and the Sunday Referee that a book of my poems has been published,’ he said. He explained that a prize was offered twice yearly, part of which consisted in the publication of the winner’s poems in book form. ‘The first was awarded to Pamela Hansford Johnson. She isn’t here tonight. I was given the second of them.’ He said that Vicky had helped him pick out what he thought were the best of the poems he had written.

‘What’s it called?’

‘Just 18 Poems. It was published just before Christmas, and I think it’s doing quite well.’ He added, ‘I’m very grateful to Vicky. It’s a big thing for me. One’s first book is the most difficult to get published. Everyone says so. Now that I have one book published, it should be easier to get the next accepted, perhaps by an ordinary firm.’

My sentiment for Vicky was already so strong that I was slightly shocked.

Dylan Thomas saw it. ‘Vicky doesn’t expect us to stay with him!’ he said. ‘This is a nursery school from which we are expected to go out into the world. When we can get published elsewhere nobody is more pleased than Vicky!’

Just then the moment for which we had been waiting arrived. The door from the inner part of the house opened and our hosts came out to join us.

Vicky came straight up to Dylan and me. I did not know which of us the distinction was meant for but it gave me joy. He stood by my chair, looking down on us beamingly, and said to Dylan, ‘You’re entertaining this little lady?’

Dylan said, ‘I’ve been telling her something of the history of the Poet’s Corner.’

*********************************

Laugharne,
Carmarthenshire,
Wales
19 June 1940
Dear Miss Fuller
I haven’t heard anything from Vicky and Runia for years, until about a fortnight ago.
Then Pamela Johnson wrote to tell me that Vicky had just died. I was very grieved to hear it; he was a sweet, wise man. Runia’s address is 84, Boundary Road, NW8. At least, I suppose she is still there. I wrote her a letter, but I haven’t had a reply yet; probably she’s too sad to write.
Yours sincerely
Dylan Thomas

#occult #literarymodernism #aleistercrowley #victorneuberg #poetry #magick #mandrakeofoxford

MAGICK WORKS

Julian Vayne

Magick Works
Julian Vayne
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1869928-469
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Magick/Chaos Magick.

Magick Works / UK / £15.00

Magick Works / USA & AUS / $24.00

For USA kindle edition

For UK kindle edition

REVIEW

”Many years ago your editor had a short conversation with the author of this book at the Aquarian Festival in London when he was still a teenager. He was asking how he could join a coven or a magical lodge and my advice was that he had to wait a few years. At the time some people dismissed him as a precocious brat, but the passing of time has proved that judgement wrong.

His latest book is a selection of ‘personal experiences, insights and challenges woven throughout with the golden thread of magick’ and they are mostly based on the talks he has given over the years since he was a wunderkind. They range from Crowley as a shaman to English witchcraft and macumba, green politics and druidry, to drugs and magick. Highly entertaining stuff.”


Magick Works by Julian Vayne,
Reviewed by Mike Howard in The Cauldron,
issue 131, February 2009.

 

Making Talismans

Featured

Nick Farrell

Making Talismans cover



Making Talismans
Nick Farrell
Format: Softcover/284 pp/illustrated.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-57-2
£19.99 /US$25
Subjects: Magic/Occult.

Discover the secret keys and practical techniques to turn mundane objects into “living entities of power,” bringing real change in your life. By pooling magical practices from shamanism, paganism, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Dion Fortune, Making Talismans offers training and techniques for performing advanced magical talismanic operations.

For many years this occult classic has been “out of print” and now has been reworked by the author to reveal more detailed and advanced magical work.

This book is nearly entirely practical and tells the reader how to create talismans which work and how this specialist form of magical work can be part of a spiritual path.

Nick Farrell is the author is the Chief Adept of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea which is a modern Golden Dawn dedicated to magical experimentation and development.

http://nick-farrell.blogspot.com/
Nick Farrell’s Blog – A blog providing training for all interested in the Golden Dawn, the magical writings of Nick Farrell and his Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea

Click here for UK edition including postage

Click here for US edition

Merlin’s Mound

Nigel Bryant
(Magical Fiction)
(Arthurian Myths & Legends)

Merlin’s Mound
Nigel Bryant
Format: Softcover
£10.00/US$15.00
Subjects: Magical Fiction/Grail & Arthurian Myths & Legends/Spirituality.

UK edition

USA edition

“a wonderful book… in the same category as Alan Garner and Susan Cooper” Professor Ronald Hutton

‘This boy’s stupendous! He can see the past and see the gods. He’s seen the Lady of the Lake!’

A colossal Stone Age mound in Wiltshire is the legendary burial place of Merlin. When Jo’s father begins to excavate, Jo himself is drawn into an extraordinary adventure that unearths the mound’s true secret. It’s up to him to reveal it before it’s destroyed. And time is short.

‘A week ago he’d have laughed at this. Now he’s on the edge of a whole new world.’

This is a story for everyone with a taste for myth, visions and another reality…

About the book:
The Stone Age monuments at Avebury in Wiltshire are world-famous, attracting thousands of visitors each year. Two of the most dramatic are the enormous burial chamber known as the West Kennet Long Barrow, and Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. Less well known is Silbury’s “sister” mound at Marlborough a few miles due east, but this is nothing less than the legendary burial place of Merlin.

These extraordinary sites are the key locations of the novel Merlin’s Mound, in which an adolescent is awakened in startling fashion to their meaning and original purpose. It will appeal to everyone from the protagonist’s age upward with a taste for myth, legend and visions [Marlborough is surely the only town in Britain with an Arthurian motto – WHERE NOW ARE THE BONES OF WISE MERLIN – and Merlin’s Mound will appropriately be published on June 20th 2004, the 800th anniversary of the granting of Marlborough’s charter by King John who, as it happens, makes a crucial appearance in the novel…]

REVIEWS

From Dragon’s Wood Magazine:
‘Meet Joel (Jo). He’s a nice lad. He likes football, he misses his mother (who is no longer with his dad), and he has the misfortune to have an obsessive and arrogant archaeologist for his father. Jo’s dad takes him on a dig in Marlborough Wiltshire to excavate what is locally known been as Merlin’s mound. Jo really doesn’t want to be there, he would rather be watching football or playing computer games. Indeed he calls Silbury Hill ‘another pile of prehistoric pointlessness’. Jo’s relationship with his father is fraught at best and certainly not helped by some of the comments his father makes to his son.

Things start to happen…

Jo meets Dag, Gareth and Mort, three enigmatic characters who will play an interesting role as the story unfolds. Joe starts to realise that things are happening, things that he has no explanation for, things that will cause him to question and wonder. As time goes on Jo is more and more against the excavation of the Mound. He ‘knows’ that below the ground something or someone is still in residence. Is it Merlin? His father is convinced that the Marlborough site is a burial mound of someone pretty special and that somewhere in the mound four and a half thousand-year-old treasure is waiting for him to get his grasping hands on. He doesn’t subscribe to the Merlin theory however. Jo on the other hand becomes more and more convinced that digging the mound is the wrong thing to do. It becomes his mission to reveal the true secret of the site and time is running out. What is that secret and ce of will Jo succeed?

Published by Mandrake of Oxford, Merlin’s Mound is listed on their website under the ‘young fiction’ genre. Certainly the content of this book will appeal to teenagers. However that should not deter older readers. I found this both entertaining and interesting and certainly some light relief from all those other heavy books we pagans tend to read.

The author Nigel Bryant, whose involvement with Arthurian matters is long-standing and obvious from the way he writes, brings the reader a lively contemporary tale which often challenges our ideas on modern archaeology. I was left wondering whether or not digging up the past is always the right thing to do. This is the type of story that is great for us oldies to read on lazy summer afternoons in the back garden. Youngsters will no doubt identify with the often anxed adolescent that Jo is and I highly recommend it to anyone from about 15 years old. ‘

More reviews

Druid Network:
This is a book aimed at a ‘teenage’ audience, and it’s easy to see the central character appealing to many a surly teenager! But this the tale of a special teenager with special gifts, which link everyday events and archaeology – the never ending search for scientific ‘truth’ and knowledge – to the sacred within and around us all, and to the sacred landscape of Wiltshire.

But it is a work that can be read and enjoyed by any age, the story a timeless tale, one that holds the reader spellbound, fully involved with events and engaged with the participants. The monuments of Avebury and Merlin’s Mount at Marlborough come alive on the pages, and the less well known mound of Merlins Mount is central to the whole story, as the title suggests!

The tale is well written and flows beautifully and evocatively, pulling the reader in and giving real involvement with what is happening, and how the mystery will unravel. Highly recommended.

NIGEL BRYANT v DAN BROWN
MERLIN’S MOUND author Nigel Bryant appeared on ITV’s much-publicised programme The Grail Trail (25.9.05) to attack the vision of the Holy Grail in Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE.

“It may seem strange,” he says, “that I laid into Brown for using the Grail as a symbol of the womb, of the sacred feminine, when that very thing is central to MERLIN’S MOUND. But the difference is that I’m using it knowingly as a symbol. And I don’t claim that MERLIN’S MOUND is anything more (or less) than a story.”

“The trouble with Brown’s book is that it’s a prime example of a dire new literary genre of pseudo-fact. Unfortunately, in THE DA VINCI CODE Dan Brown has swallowed hook, line and sinker the central thesis of a best-seller of two decades ago – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – which can be demolished in 30 seconds. ”

“The theory depends entirely on a mistake caused by astonishingly sloppy scholarship. The play on words by which the SANGREAL (the Holy Grail) is supposedly a code for SANG-REAL (‘royal blood’) – leading on to the hilarious notion (after all, let’s just stop and think about it for a second) that a child born of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was the start of a bloodline which kept going in secret for 2,000 years – simply doesn’t work. Dan Brown lists a series of ‘facts’ at the start of his book; well here’s a fact he doesn’t mention: the spelling SANGREAL doesn’t exist in any French work. It’s a pun that works only in French, but no French writer ever used it. In French it’s invariably written SAINT GRAAL. The only person who ever did write SANGREAL was the 15th-century Englishman John Hardyng whose French wasn’t very good, so he heard ‘saint graal’, didn’t know how to spell it, had a guess and wrote ‘sangreal’. And on that simple mistake, almost akin to a typing error, is the whole wild theory based.”

“I’ve no problem with it, actually – the Mary Magdalene / bloodline of Christ idea’s a fun story – but claiming it (and other supposed ‘facts’ in Dan Brown’s book) to be ‘true’ is sad in the extreme. We’ve got to be able to distinguish fact from fiction. Pseudo-fact does no favours either for fiction or for history or, for that matter, for the world of symbols.”

“I’m seriously interested in the medieval Grail stories – hence my book The Legend of the Grail [Boydell & Brewer, 2004], which brings together the eight great French grail romances of the 12th and 13th centuries and creates from them a single, coherent narrative. Womb imagery is nowhere to be seen. But that doesn’t mean I can’t use the Grail’s potential symbolism and work it into a story of the sacred feminine in MERLIN’S MOUND. But I’m not going to do a Dan Brown and claim it to be ‘true’ in the sense of being a ‘fact’. Let’s all grow up a bit. The Grail doesn’t exist and never did. But it’s there even though it’s not there. It’s absolutely ‘true’, profoundly ‘true’, when you take it as a symbol.”

Mind-Sprung

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AD Harvey
(Crime Fiction)

978-1-906958-67-1b

Mind-Sprung
AD Harvey
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-67-1
£10/US$16
Subjects: Crime Fiction/Entheogens/Counterculture.

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US & Row





An A-Level drop-out graduates from evicting immigrants during the heyday of the inner-city slum landlords during the 1960s to stripping redundant churches during the early 1970s, before moving to northern Sweden equipped only with the proceeds of selling stolen property and some hashish. He finds new sources of hashish even in Sweden but eventually the money runs out, and he returns to London: only to discover it is even worse than when he left.


Eric Naiman, a Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Berkeley, in a six-page attack on A.D.Harvey’s multitudinous literary crimes in THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT in 2013, described Harvey’s account of drug-taking and other shenanigans in London and the Swedish Arctic as “unreadable”, but perhaps that was because he hadn’t actually read it. Another of A.D.Harvey’s novels, WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW was described by THE GUARDIAN as “weirdly compelling” and by THE INDEPENDENT as “free-flowing and poetic….unforgettable.”

Mystical Vampire

The Life and Works of Mabel Collins
Kim Farnell

Mystical Vampire
The Life & Works of Mabel Collins
Kim Farnell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781869928858
£15.00/US$26
Subjects: Biography/Theosophical History

Click HERE for the UK edition

Click HERE for USA & Worldwide

”I recommend the book to one and all whom have an interest in Victorian Society, for the off-beat origins of many institutions that are influential on our lives today. More than a few ideas found within Mystical Vampire such as the possibility of Annie Besant and Helena Blavatsky being more than just friends, make the book a good investment. For the Ripperologist, the two (and there may be other gems in there, so buy it!) items I mentioned on Collins / Stephenson are worth the price of the book alone. Few books (Sugden, Begg and Evans come to mind) are as well referenced and footnoted as this one. Ms Farnell has done an excellent job on her subject, Minna Mabel Collins.”
Howard Brown, Casebook: Jack The Ripper, the Web’s largest Jack The Ripper public archive www.casebook.org

”Kim Farnell has done devotees of gaslight and mediums a service in bringing Mabel’s world back to life.” Gary Lachman – The Independent On Sunday.
Gary Lachman’s works include:Turn Off Your Mind -The Mystic Sixties and The Dark Side of The Age of Aquarius (Sidgwick & Jackson) and The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams (Dedalus).

MYSTICAL VAMPIRE
The characters:
*Mabel Collins, Theosophist, novelist, fashion columnist, journalist and anti-vivisection campaigner
*Madame Blavatsky the extraordinary and highly influential Russian occultist and author, and other eminent members of her Theosophical Society
*Annie Besant, social reformer and Theosophist
*Robert Donston Stephenson, a suspect for Jack the Ripper and Mabel’s lover
*Frances Power Cobbe, social reformer, suffragist and anti-vivisection campaigner
*Charlotte Despard, social reformer, and anti-vivisection campaigner

Mabel Collins was an independent woman in the oppressive Victorian climate. She wrote many novels, but most will remember Mabel Collins, for her best selling mystical text Light On The Path published by the Theosophical Society. After her fall out with Madame Blavatsky,she carried on with her life as an esotericist, traveller and writer. She was moved by the plight and suffering of helpless creatures and became a campaigner for the abolition of vivisection.

NakedTantra

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NakedTantra

Record of a Magical Year

By Miryamdevi & Minanath

978-1-906958-97-8

$24.00 / £15.00

Click Here for NakedTantra / USA

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Click Here for Kindle edition / UK

There are many books on how to do magick, but not so many with stories about actually doing it and what happens. NakedTantra lays bare the inner states of the two brave souls involved in this extended magical work.

An experiment, two people, two countries, one mind, experimenting in tantra meta-magick, cosmic astral travel to the land of no boundaries, looking for the doors of perception.

Of necessity, the contents of this grimoire might be considered erotic. And, with that thought in mind, it might also be that the reader is occasionally aroused by our story as it progresses. Some might find this an unwanted intrusion, into what is otherwise an exploration of a magical world. Others we surmise will take this in good part, accepting that, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. To those who do not share these sensibilities, and are unmoved by what you are about to read, we offer our sincerest apologies.

Natural Meditation

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Natural Meditation: A Secret school of Tantra Sadhana
Michael E. Salihovich
Format: Softcover/172 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-914153-18-1
£14.99/US$22.00
Subjects: Tantra, Yoga, Meditation

USA Edition

UK Edition

Natural Yoga or Surrender Meditation is called Sahaja Yoga in Sanskrit. Translated, it means Natural Union. This great God-given gift and tradition embody the innate and ultimate striving of humanity for all that is good and pure; it reveals a path as natural as breathing and leads the aspirant to union with God, union with Absolute Truth and union with Divine Love.

~ Yogeshwar Muni

This book presents an introduction to a less-known path of surrender or natural meditation, where one abandon using will and surrenders all his actions and fruits of those actions to God. Although the centrepiece of all religions and mystical systems, the exact practice or sadhana, was traditionally transmitted only in secrecy, orally from a teacher to a disciple. This is one of the rare texts in English discussing this practice and the prerequisites to it.

Michael E. Salihovich (Brahmananda) was a student of Yogeshwar Muni’s (Charles Berner) teachings since the mid-1980s. He was initiated into Sahaj yoga in 2011 and has been giving Enlightenment Intensive retreats, meditation seminars and individual counselling for more than 30 years.

Nightshades

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A Tourist Guide to the Nightside
Jan Fries


Nightshades
A Tourist Guide to the Nightside
Jan Fries
Format: Hardback – Cased Matt Laminate A4 216 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-45-9
£24/US$40
Subjects: Aleister Crowley & Thelema/Kenneth Grant/Typhonian Magick/Occult Art.

UK Edition £24.00+p&p

USA/AUS Edition $40.00+p&p

“Nightshades is the record of one remarkable magician’s exploration of the inverse regions of the Tree of Life. Aleister Crowley’s Liber 231 provides the map and Kenneth Grant’s Nightside of Eden a travelogue. “Liber 231, apparently started life as a text within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as an exercise to develop astral and trance abilities or perhaps in other more elaborate rites. The nightside aspect requires some care and alertness in case of accident. The correct attitude is said to be one of self or ego-less witness. Or maybe it’s just one needs the use of an all-embracing rather than a limited kind of identity and self-identification” (mmm)

“The Nightside is always with us. It’s so much older than the Dayside. Before the light began to shine, the night was there. Some assume that we are dealing with a simple polarity. On one hand the radiant world of colours and forms, more or less thinkable, reasonable and meaningful. Like the pretty picture of the Tree of Life it has its scenic cites, its hotels, restaurants, shopping opportunities and highways in between.

On the other hand the chaotic world of uncertain and incomprehensible mysteries. Both of them connected by the voidness that makes them possible. It looks symmetrical. But when you reach the Nightside it doesn’t work like that. The Nightside is not simply a reflection of the dayside with a few confusing and spooky bits thrown in.


The Dayside is a tiny island of experience in a huge ocean, the Nightside, full of currents, island chains and continents of the possible and impossible. All and Nothing are present everywhere. Our island is not the opposite of the world-ocean, it is simply a tiny and comprehensible part of it.” (jf)


Jan Fries Nightshades comprises 72 intense drawings prefaced by an explanatory essay detailing the background and genesis of this ultimate magical adventure.

Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick

Greg Humphries & Julian Vayne

Now that’s what I call Chaos Magick
Greg Humphries & Julian Vayne
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1869928741
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Chaos Magick

UK / £15.00

USA & AUS / $24.00

Click here for Kindle UK edition

Click here for Kindle USA edition


Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick gives the beginner and experienced practitioner alike a modern, 21st century view into the powerful and often misunderstood magical current called ‘Chaos Magick’. Written in a clear and easily accessible style it examines the theory behind many techniques used in magical, artistic, religious and scientific systems of thought; then links and applies them towards desired goals. Separated into two volumes the book can be used by the reader as a workbook with rituals, techniques and exercises to be followed, as a window into contemporary magical thought at the turn of the century or simply as a rollercoaster of a good read! However you choose to use it, ts book will leave you feeling positive, inspired and ready to apply any of the methods presented to your own life.”

REVIEW

”we cannot recommend this book to anybody who is frightened of magic, of self-discovery or of adventure; to anybody who wants ritual experiences that are absolutely risk-free and have a guaranteed result; to anybody whose concept of ceremony depends on the provision of scripts for all participants, carefully typed out and enclosed in polythene wrappers; to anybody who believes that magical practices should follow set traditions, without mixing ideas from different ages or cultures; to anybody who believes that human beings are firmly subordinated to deities and must do their will; and to anybody whose favourite words of condemnation for others are ‘irresponsible’ or ‘self-indulgent’. Above all, I cannot recommend it to anybody without a sense of humour. Anybody else should love it: it provides an experience of ritual that is energetic, fresh, investigative, exciting and fun, in a completely individual way.’
Professor Ronald Hutton

MORE REVIEWS

”If you think ritual magic is about drawing pentagrams in blood and sacrificing your neighbour’s cat – if, that is, you think about it at all – this book will come as a surprise. Not too many books on magic – or magick, the authors’ preferred spelling, which the notorious Aleister Crowley adopted to differentiate the true art from tawdry prestidigitation – boast of a ritual to “stop time” which involves baking cookies. Or suggest making a talisman into a fridge magnet. Or advise a game of Twister to set the mood. Or link Jean Luc Godard, Jacques Lacan and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to acquiring the Knowledge and Conversation of your Holy Guardian Angel. It’s also true that not many envision the dark Hindu goddess Kali as P J Harvey wearing a T-shirt that says “lick my legs” or offer exercises to achieve multiple orgasms – male and female.

If this sounds like a spoof, that’s understandable: while the authors are serious and dedicated practitioners, they have the key occult insight that when humour is lacking, all magic fails, and they take a decidedly light-handed (or, in their terminology, “empty-handed”) approach to what can too often be a dreary, sanctimonious affair. The “chaos magick” of the tide emerged in the late 1980s, when, like practically everything else, occultism was infected with the post- modernism bug. Jettisoning the cumbersome apparatus of traditional practice, and blending as many styles and belief systems as desired, chaos magick is about using your imagination and whatever is at hand in order to “engage with mystery.”

Devotees can find its origin in the work of the 19th-century French ex-Socialist-tumed-Kabbalist Eliphas Levi, who boiled down the real machinery of magic to the will and imagination. Where earlier mages fixated on a neurotic obsession with the minutiae of demonic names and the exact times to invoke them, Levi argued that all this was merely a means of focusing the magician’s own powers. Chaos magicians took Levi’s lead and ran with it: they’re more concerned with exploring their own creativity than with getting it right, and would rather invent their own spirits than lose sleep worrying about the appropriate one to petition. This book is a collection of rituals, accounts and reflections on how magick can invest any humdrum life with some new perspectives and, above all, fun.

Although clearly not for everyone, unlike many books on the subject, this one’s readable and the authors have a knack for the catchy phrase. “Love,” they tell us, “is as ubiquitous as the curvature of space.” In one account of a ritual invoking the aforementioned Kali, the participants call out “Hear us oh pork chop champion of the oppressed.” There’s also a personal tone that’s appealing. These magicians come across as very likeable chaps who are as concerned with having a family and a nice home as they are with exploring the profundities of existence. Does it work? Well, as any chaos magician would answer “There’s only one way to find out.”
Gary Lachman, 17th, JULY, 2005, in THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY.
Gary Lachman has written many popular books on occulture, including, The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams published by Dedalus.

—–
Review from Danny Lowe on Phil Hine’s website

”It’s been over 25 years since the first Chaos Magick book was published (Pete Carroll’s Liber Null – even if the first edition didn’t use the term). It’s a current which has been hailed as revolutionary, and pronounced dead several times (again in this book, in fact). Can a magical approach of such uncertain status have anything new to say, long out of its adolescence and stumbling towards middle age? I guess this book is fairly placed to answer that question.Unusually, this is two books in one, with sections from Julian Vayne and Greg Humphries respectively. I felt this was the first strength of the book, as multiple authors suggest a diversity of viewpoints, avoiding the trap of asserting a single, solitary “one right way”. The first section begins with an erudite introduction to the last century or so of Western Magick taking in Eliphas Levi, Crowley, Austin Spare and the innovations of the Chaos current. This is followed by four accounts of the authors’ involvement in several different rituals. As might be expected from a chaos magician, an eclectic variety of approaches is given, with material deriving from Voodoun and Tantra alongside some more freeform approaches. However, surprisingly (depending on whose books you’ve been reading) we’re given more than raw technique. Each of the sections is reasonably lengthy and more than just a “ritual rubric” – importantly, we’re given context, in both the background and results of the rituals entered into, as opposed to a “now do this”, nuts n’ bolts approach. The “backstage” of these rituals takes in variously film-making, a punch-up, chats with kids and contemplations of mortality and fatherhood, amongst other things.

The second half of the book comes has 3 sections – Abstract, Theory and Practicum. Again, the personal and descriptive style comes to the fore, weaving an account of a love affair in with a description of a long term evocation. This style – again, the context – in both halves of the book, felt to me very much what it is like to actually stop reading and get down to doing magick – to take those tentative steps, and eventually to allow yourself to be caught up, inspired. To me, this is the real strength of this book, magick is shown as an involving, creative act, something that touches all areas of life, all concerns – it doesn’t just stop at the edge of the circle.

The remaining two sections of the books second half give “bones” to the descriptive “flesh”, giving details of theory and technique respectively. With regard to the former, I particularly liked the authors’ description of the act of storytelling – addressing the ways in which we weave narratives around ourselves continuously and suggesting that we can step into new, empowering stories. The “technical ” section gives details of various ideas borrowed and plundered, in true chaos magick style – NLP, the works of Mantak Chia, spontaneous art and the Holy Guardian Angel. “Plundered” they may be, but here I feel that they add up to more than the sum of their parts. This section contains much that could be bent to one’s own design.

Now, I didn’t like everything about this book – at moments I found the style a bit …breathless, and not all the rituals were to my taste – but this is a matter of just that, taste. A more serious criticism, one that can be applied to chaos magick in general, arose when reading the section on Tantric ritual – I wondered, was the symbolism here just a cool sounding gestalt, or had it been lived, felt and thought through? I’d argue for the latter over the former anytime. It’s this kind of relentless eclecticism in CM that can feel like a lack of engagement, a kind of frothy post-modern shallowness. However, turning back to the introduction, I was pleased to find this statement, regarding contemporary practice: “depth and diversity seem to be the predominant approach rather than polymorphous paradigms with a few key principles”. This is a sentiment I heartily agree with. To be eclectic does not necessarily equate with being superficial.

Overall, then, I found this an enjoyable and rewarding work with much to inspire, imitate (and rip off). I was left unsure whether chaos magick was alive or dead (and to be totally honest, I don’t really care).- however, I am sure that people are continuing to practise exciting and creative magick, under whatever banner.”

 

Nu Tantras of the UttaraKaulas

John Power

Nu Tantras of the UttaraKaulas
John Power
Publisher: Phoenix Publications Chelmsford 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9542286-6-8
£15.00+p&p / US$24+p&p

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA & AUS

“The book by John Power is one of the first attempts I have seen to write a critical analysis of some of Mahendranath’s writings. John was entrusted with the Uttarakaula tantric aspect of our world and he has obviously nurtured and worked with his specialty for as he says 21 years (and more now.) At the end of his analytical work he includes original, very creative and fascinating rituals that are the summation of his experience. It is quirky and personal and that adds greatly to its value. I have often gotten swamped by Mahendranath’s large output of written words. To see a few of his major tantras re-worded, discussed, analysed and emotionally digested is so helpful. I recommend that those who are interested in the works of Mahendranath give this work more than a quick cursory glance.”
– Lalita Devi, Canadian Initiate and Tantrik Yogini.

“Power begins with an intro that traces his own relationship with Tantra, before clearly laying out the perspectives he is viewing the tradition from and giving a biographical note about Shri Dadaji Gurudev Mahendranath. He then proceeds to summarise Dadaji’s initiation and writing, then includes some of his own original rituals and images. This book is beautiful. So what validity does my opinion have especially in the light of my own rather self damning opening statement (to compound this outrage I neither understand Sanskrit nor am an initiated Tantrika)? However I have been a practicing magician for a long time, have lived in both the occidental and oriental environs, and have the insight into art, magick and humanity that comes from age and experience. I believe John Power has written a book that is of great value. It is about love and freedom; fun, liberation and compassion; and ways to work for and with this in a creative and progressive way. ‘The Nu Tantras of the Uttarakaulas’ is about magick from the heart and the inner self; the greatest and most transformative magick there is.” (Charlotte Rodgers, whose The Bloody Sacrifice is published by Mandrake)

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Out There

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The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg
Spencer Kansa

Out There
The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg
Spencer Kansa
Format: Softcover / 256 pp / illustrated in colour
ISBN: 978-1-906958-79-4
£30/US$36
Subjects: Art/American Underground/Biography/Film Studies.

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From the late-1950s until his premature death in 1977, Burt Shonberg was one of the most highly admired artists in Los Angeles. During this period, his eye-popping murals graced the facades and interiors of popular coffeehouses and hip clubs on the Sunset Strip; his paintings adorned several notable rock album covers, and his haunting portraits featured prominently in Roger Corman’s film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and The Premature Burial.

Born in 1933, Shonberg grew up in the all-American beach town of Revere, Massachusetts, where, according to his friends, he spent most of his time drawing and indulging in his love of monster movies. After graduating high school, he studied for two years at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and then, after a brief spell in the army, he ventured to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a commercial artist.

Soon after he settled in L.A., Shonberg became the lover of the legendary occult artist Marjorie Cameron who turned him on to the teachings of the Edwardian magus Aleister Crowley and introduced him to the mind-warping properties of peyote. Shonberg also embraced the Fourth Way system of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and his canvases began to reflect the mystical illumination inspired by his higher states of consciousness.

In 1960, the artist was chosen by Dr. Oscar Janiger to participate in his groundbreaking study into the effects of LSD-25 on the creative process. Although Shonberg regarded himself as a magical realist, his remarkable renderings of his hallucinogenic visions led many of his acolytes to regard him as the preeminent psychedelic artist of the era, and in the words of his friend and fellow painter Walter Teller, “Burt was the artist of Laurel Canyon.”

Yet despite his popularity and status, Shonberg’s artistry has been criminally overlooked in all historical accounts of the Southern Californian art scene, until now. Out There redresses this injustice and brings some long overdue recognition to L.A.’s greatest lost artist, in a book illustrated with rare examples of his incandescent artwork.

“Spencer Kansa has time traveled. Knowing Burt as well as I did, it really does feel, from his assessments and descriptions, that Spencer actually knew him as well, and Burt for sure would have dug him. They would have had a good time. I can see Burt smiling. I’m serious.”
Hampton Fancher, screenwriter, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.

Read Spencer Kansa interview about Burt Shonberg and Bohemian Los Angeles with the LA Review of Books
lareviewofbooks.org/article/burt-shonberg-and-bohemian-los-angeles-an-interview-with-spencer-kansa/

 

 

P is For Prostitution

Featured

An A-Z of a harsh life survived
Charlotte Rodgers
Illustrated by Ruth Ramsden

P is for Prostitution
An A to Z of a harsh life survived
Charlotte Rodgers
ISBN: 978-1-906958-26-8
£15.00 +P&P /US $24.00 +P&P

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‘The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience…’
– Flannery O’Connor

P is for Prostitution is a primer unlike any you will have read before, the ABC approach far from simplistic. Through various episodes the author charts her own insights into addiction and the kind of existence that inevitably goes with this. Each letter marks a step on a journey into the lowest circles of hell in which the “author’s creativity and intellect is misdirected towards a chaotic, nihilistic and devastating existence” (reader’s foreword). There are moments of black comedy, sexual horror, and final, uneasy redemption in which the author reclaims the trajectory of her life.

“. . . the life you lived . . . represents the era you grew up in and the position of women in society and the rules they were expected to live by and the consequences of breaking these rules. Women are often regarded as objects, possessions and are expected to be submissive.” (Jane Hunt)

P is for Prostitution grew out of the author’s exploration of death and ancestral cults. It led her to acknowledge her own past, re-connecting and rescuing a catalogue of youthful dead or missing loved ones. “This was no surprise given the way we lived our lives at that time, but was no less saddening. Whilst the people concerned were not blood relatives, they were part of who I was and very much my family of choice in our shared inability or refusal to accept the terms of mainstream existence.”

“Daddy was an exclamation mark /
exploding on blank walls /
I was a biblioteque hero /
supporting Atlas’ balls /
Roller skating on Freudian slips /
Pussy footing through the fly leafings/
Of fellow social misfits.”

———————-
“Charlotte Rodgers was born in New Zealand.

Her mother was a war baby, abandoned at the Home of Compassion in Wellington and later adopted by a middle class couple with strong Catholic sensibilities and a desire to do good and moral things; a desire that didn’t encompass compassionate and kind child rearing.

Charlotte’s father was Scottish and from a coal mining family, he escaped this background through self education and by joining the merchant navy, and whilst on leave in New Zealand he met and married Charlotte’s mother.

Charlotte was brought up by two creative, intelligent and unstable individuals whose backgrounds created unhappiness and various manifestations of addictive and compulsive behaviours.

The family constantly moved house, the mother was addicted to a huge amount of pills, the father would regularly ‘run away from home’ and there were many times the only stability in Charlotte’s life was when she was sent to live with her grandmother who was rigidly and violently Catholic.

Charlotte was a shy frightened and introverted child and puberty hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks. At age 15 she made several suicide attempts and was put into psychiatric care to be treated for bulimia, a condition that would stay with her for many years.

She also developed addictions to alcohol and drugs, including heroin, and necessarily worked as a prostitute to fund the habit whilst living a peripheral existence travelling through Australia, Asia and Europe, before settling in England.


After 19 years as an active addict (15 of them as an IV user) she cleaned up with the help of various institutions and agencies, and eventually was able to take the risk to go back to what she always wanted to do; creating art and writing.”

Charlotte is author and editor of The Bloody Sacrifice and
co-editor of The Contemporary Western Book of The Dead, both published by Mandrake.

——————-

Illustrated by Ruth Ramsden

——————–

Daddy was an exclamation mark, exploding on blank walls,
I was a biblioteque hero, supporting Atlas’ balls,
Rolling skating on Freudian slips,
Pussy footing through the fly leafings
Of fellow social misfits.

Well read, intellectually fed neurosis,
Genetically perfected psychosis
Penis Envy
Poison Ivy
Piss and Raving.
Something in the woodshed gave you a fright,
Rumplestiltskin will tell you anytime
Its prick is worse than its bite.

Go-go virgins in discotheque cages
Venus in politically unsound furs
Lectures on the latest psychoanalytical magus
Romulus Remus Oedipus
Sucking dugs like common curs.

Psychoanalyse, disembowel and theorise,
Penis Envy Poison Ivy
Something in the woodshed gave you a fright,
Rumplestiltskin will tell you anytime,
Its prick is worse than its bite.

C.Rodgers 1985

Vowels, Consonants and Other Building Blocks: An Introduction
Several years of exploring and writing about death and cults of the ancestors have led to my putting this, more personal book together. As I looked at how necessary acknowledgement of the past can be to solidify the sense of self, both as an individual and a member of a community; flashes of my own, personal history came back to me. I started to re connect with this and found a catalogue of youthful dead and missing loved ones. This was no surprise to me given the way that we lived our lives at that time, but was no less saddening. Whilst the people concerned were not blood relatives, they were part of who I was at that time. They were very much my family of choice in our shared inability or refusal to accept the terms that mainstream existence at that time offered. I decided to reclaim this time and a lost part of myself, by going back and recording some of my rather erratic recollections.

Initially I was worried that writing this could be self-indulgence or an exercise in personal exploration and poor man’s psychoanalysis that shouldn’t be put out to a wider audience.

However the times and places I lived in, and the way I experienced them, hold things which I believe are core to many who struggle to find their place in this strange world.

Putting such a chaotic mass of events into order could have proved an impossibility until it became apparent to me that my early years were very much about finding a set of rules to live by, thus the subtitle, ‘A Modern Primer’.

Using the alphabet to give order to these memories was a continuation of the primer concept and works well for me. My life was not lived in a straight line and my rather scrappy memory would have rebelled against too linear a form of organisation.

The time span this book encompasses is the 1970s to the 1990s and the backdrop moves between Hong Kong, Australia, London and New Zealand.

This was a time when digital watches were rare and expensive things; China was hard line communist and undeveloped; the Internet was unheard of and there was still a wall dividing Berlin. Graphic novels were on the ascent; only the super-rich had credit cards, and AIDS was just a whisper that could kill in its utterance.

When I was diagnosed with bulimia it was a relatively unknown condition that the medical establishment were unsure how to approach.

I cleaned up as crack was just starting to make its presence known and I was already seeing changes it had made in the junkie community.

Drug using rapidly became even more associated with violence, users burned out much more quickly, if they survived.

When I stopped using drugs I was 30 and considered relatively young in the ‘recovery’ community, but 18 years later I see women burned out by the time they are 15 or 16.

I was one of the first waves of people to go into drug and alcohol rehab, and sad to say the women’s only treatment centre I was in, due to lack of funding, no longer exists.

However the core of the experiences in this book isn’t era specific but is more about one individual’s rather rocky road through her early years.

One thing that I feel I should add.

Readers may find my tone to be detached and even perceive a certain lack of emotion. I was and still am an internalised person, something that may have led to some of my problems over the years.

I look at old photographs of myself and I see a lovely looking girl who seemed locked in her own world. Eventually I couldn’t stay in that private place anymore, despite ever increasing amounts of emotion suppressing drugs. When I left rehab I had a graduation of sorts, a ceremony where I was presented with a butterfly brooch. As I was given my pin, Sister Rosemary who ran the home said that when I arrived at the facility I was like the survivor of a serious car crash; locked in trauma.

Walking away from my car crash life, with its explorations, adventures, and ever increasing horror was when I really started to live.

It was a very different world then, but in many respects, the way we all live and develop has not changed at all.

crogers2

Reader’s Comment
‘P is for Prostitution’ is a personal memoir, which explores episodes and experiences from Charlotte Rodgers’ difficult chaotic life, through her childhood and into early adulthood. At times this book made me feel incredibly sad and much of it was alien to my own comfortable, relatively trouble-free youth. However, her story captivated me and I found myself wanting to find out more about the girl being described. Also, as a woman who grew up during the same decades, I recognized the underlying misogyny of the era and the rules that women were expected to observe. Both Charlotte and her mother suffered in different ways because they were unable to live within narrow definitions of womanhood.

The Primer structure works particularly well and gives the impression of bringing order to a fragmented and chaotic existence. It comments on the nature of individual memory that is not linear and makes connections between disparate incidents and episodes. This form enables the reader to think for herself and reflect on how Charlotte’s childhood and formative experiences affect her situation as she grows up.

Throughout P is for Prostitution, despite the chaos of a life dominated by addictions and illnesses, Charlotte remains a creative and intellectually curious person. Her attraction to similar damaged anarchic souls both as friends and lovers can be seen at various points in her book. Near the end she refers to ‘the person from Porlock’, a debt collector who interrupted Coleridge whilst he was writing Kubla Khan. Charlotte writes, “I feel as if I too had a debt collector knocking on the door of my life, and breaking and permanently redirecting my concentration.” The book conveys a real sense that Charlotte’s creativity and intellect was somehow misdirected at a young age towards a nihilistic and savage existence. It also traces the constant, durable thread of spirituality in her life. This is fascinating given her early encounters with Catholicism.

The book powerfully communicates the devastating effect of physical and mental abuse on Charlotte’s whole family. The suffering her parents endured as children impacts on Charlotte’s life and leads to a lack of stability and security when she is growing up. Charlotte too is terrorized as a child whilst under the ‘care’ of her Grandmother. The sexual repression, religious fanaticism and cruelty that lie behind this abuse are horrifying. Children’s lack of power and the lasting consequences of adult neglect and brutality are recurrent themes.

The reader is able to observe how Charlotte’s eating disorders are caused by a desire to gain some control and how the perception that thinness equals happiness and acceptance actually appears to have almost the opposite effect. This is something that all women can relate to at some level. The book also gave me an insight into addiction and the kind of existence that inevitably goes with it. Her experiences are distinctive but they do reflect the times she lived in and the alternative lifestyle that seemed to be offered by the world of drugs and music. The attraction of losing control and finding a different reality is explored. However, the destructive power of addiction ultimately makes life unbearable.

Charlotte’s discussion of sex in P is for Prostitution is thought-provoking and brave. Her unconventional attitudes and approach made me think hard about the way women are condemned and vilified for sexual transgressions. Moreover, it made me consider how women and children are so often the victims of abuse and the hypocrisy that existed about this when we were growing up and still does to a large extent. Women who transgressed the sexual norms or accepted codes of behaviour were seen as to blame for the abuse they suffered, rather than as victims.

Fundamentally, this is a fascinating articulate and engrossing book. It describes experiences and feelings with which many people, especially women, will identify. I think people will enjoy Charlotte’s honesty and will want to read on and find out how she manages to get through and eventually change her life permanently. Charlotte takes you into divergent worlds, often frighteningly disordered; but the creative, compassionate and intelligent woman that she is today, is always there despite the destructive forces in her early life.

Jane Hunt
Librarian
Somerset
*************************************************************************

Pagan Heart of the West

Featured

Vol. I

Randy P. Conner PhD

The Pagan Heart of the West challenges current academic notions that paganism died when Christianization occurred; that the transition from paganism to Christianity was a fairly easy, nonviolent one; that persons once pagan were happy to accept the new religion because it fulfilled them or because they viewed it as superior – as if the Inquisition never happened; and that all things pagan are in fact Christian prior to the mid-twentieth century, even though they demonstrate little or no connection to the Christian New Testament. Likewise, Pagan Heart challenges narrow conceptions of “the West.”

The Pagan Heart of the West:
Embodying Ancient Beliefs and Practices from Antiquity to the Present
Volume I “Deities and Kindred Beings”
Randy P. Conner PhD
ISBN-13: 978-1906958879
£20.00+p&p / US$28.00+p&p

Orders over £50 ($75) get free shipping

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Applying Indigenous and decolonial theories, together with Michel Foucault’s conception of subjugated knowledge, Pagan Heart suggests that instead, paganism should be explored as an ancient and indigenous set of common beliefs and practices, at once ubiquitous and local, that includes the reverence of deities; the veneration of nature; rites celebrating the seasons and the life cycle; practices of healing, divination, and magic, often guided by ritual specialists; and arts and philosophies giving expression to pagan figures, concepts, and narratives.

In this first of five volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on the utilization of theories that contest absolutist language supporting the so-called death of paganism; and on the worship and veneration of ancient deities and kindred beings. Like the other volumes, this volume demonstrates that paganism has not only persisted over the course of millennia but that it has also undergone metamorphosis and innovation.

Most importantly, Pagan Heart emphasizes that the ancient gods did not die when Christian authorities forbade their worship and sought, in N. Scott Momaday’s terms, to commit deicide, but instead that they continue to exist and thrive.

Randy P. Conner, Ph.D., is the author of several works on the intersection of gender, sexuality, mythology, and the sacred. He teaches Humanities, including World Mythology, in the Chicago area.

cover: Barthelemy d’Eyck, Emilie, Arcitas, and Palamon Praying to Their Respective Gods (c. 1465), illumination from Boccaccio’s Il Teseida Delle Nozze d’Emilia.


In this first of five volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on the utilization of theories that contest absolutist language supporting the so-called death of paganism; and on the worship and veneration of ancient deities and kindred beings. Like the other volumes, this volume demonstrates that paganism has not only persisted over the course of millennia but that it has also undergone metamorphosis and innovation.


Pagan Heart of the West II

The Pagan Heart of the West
Volume II “Nature and Rites”
Randy P. Conner PhD ISBN: 978-1906958886
£20.00+p&p / US$28.00+p&p

Kindle edition $9.99 / £ 7.17


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In this second volume, Pagan Heart focuses on the veneration of nature — flora, fauna, elements, celestial bodies — and on rituals of the seasons, life cycle, healing, divination, and magic.

The Pagan Heart of the West challenges current academic notions that paganism died when Christianization occurred; that the transition from paganism to Christianity was a fairly easy, nonviolent one; that persons once pagan were happy to accept the new religion because it fulfilled them or because they viewed it as superior – as if the Inquisition never happened; and that all things pagan are in fact Christian prior to the mid-twentieth century, even though they demonstrate little or no connection to the Christian New Testament. Likewise, Pagan Heart challenges narrow conceptions of “the West.”

Applying Indigenous and decolonial theories, together with Michel Foucault’s conception of subjugated knowledge, Pagan Heart suggests that instead, paganism should be explored as an ancient and indigenous set of common beliefs and practices, at once ubiquitous and local, that includes the reverence of deities; the veneration of nature; rites celebrating the seasons and the life cycle; practices of healing, divination, and magic, often guided by ritual specialists; and arts and philosophies giving expression to pagan figures, concepts, and narratives.

In this first of five volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on the utilization of theories that contest absolutist language supporting the so-called death of paganism; and on the worship and veneration of ancient deities and kindred beings. Like the other volumes, this volume demonstrates that paganism has not only persisted over the course of millennia but that it has also undergone metamorphosis and innovation.

Most importantly, Pagan Heart emphasizes that the ancient gods did not die when Christian authorities forbade their worship and sought, in N. Scott Momaday’s terms, to commit deicide, but instead that they continue to exist and thrive.

Randy P. Conner, PhD, is the author of several works on the intersection of gender, sexuality, mythology, and the sacred. He teaches Humanities, including World Mythology, in the Chicago area.

Pagan Heart of the West III & IV

The Pagan Heart of the West
Volume III “Rituals and Ritual Specialists”
& Volume IV “Christianisation” (two volumes bound together)

Randy P. Conner PhD
ISBN-13: 978- 1906958893
£20.00+p&p / US$28.00+p&p

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Get Pagan Heart of The West Quartet for only £65.00 postage free / UK

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In these third and fourth volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on ritual specialists, including shamans and witches, and on the campaign of Christianization.

The Pagan Heart of the West challenges current academic notions that paganism died when Christianization occurred; that the transition from paganism to Christianity was a fairly easy, nonviolent one; that persons once pagan were happy to accept the new religion because it fulfilled them or because they viewed it as superior – as if the Inquisition never happened; and that all things pagan are in fact Christian prior to the mid-twentieth century, even though they demonstrate little or no connection to the Christian New Testament. Likewise, Pagan Heart challenges narrow conceptions of “the West.”

Applying Indigenous and decolonial theories, together with Michel Foucault’s conception of subjugated knowledge, Pagan Heart suggests that instead, paganism should be explored as an ancient and indigenous set of common beliefs and practices, at once ubiquitous and local, that includes the reverence of deities; the veneration of nature; rites celebrating the seasons and the life cycle; practices of healing, divination, and magic, often guided by ritual specialists; and arts and philosophies giving expression to pagan figures, concepts, and narratives.

In this first of five volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on the utilization of theories that contest absolutist language supporting the so-called death of paganism; and on the worship and veneration of ancient deities and kindred beings. Like the other volumes, this volume demonstrates that paganism has not only persisted over the course of millennia but that it has also undergone metamorphosis and innovation.

Most importantly, Pagan Heart emphasizes that the ancient gods did not die when Christian authorities forbade their worship and sought, in N. Scott Momaday’s terms, to commit deicide, but instead that they continue to exist and thrive.

Randy P. Conner, Ph.D., is the author of several works on the intersection of gender, sexuality, mythology, and the sacred. He teaches Humanities, including World Mythology, in the Chicago area.

Pagan Heart of the West V

The Pagan Heart of the West:
Embodying Ancient Beliefs and Practices
from Antiquity to the Present
Vol. V  The Arts and Philosophy

Randy P. Conner PhD
ISBN 9781906958909
£20.00+p&p /$28.00+p&p

Click HERE for UK edition

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Get Pagan Heart of The West Quartet for only £65.00 postage free / UK

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In this fifth and final volume, we consider the persistence and transformation of pagan traditions in philosophy and the arts. This final volume also includes the extensive bibliography for the series.

The Pagan Heart of the West challenges current academic notions that paganism died when Christianization occurred; that the transition from paganism to Christianity was a fairly easy, nonviolent one; that persons once pagan were happy to accept the new religion because it fulfilled them or because they viewed it as superior – as if the Inquisition never happened; and that all things pagan are in fact Christian prior to the mid-twentieth century, even though they demonstrate little or no connection to the Christian New Testament. Likewise, Pagan Heart challenges narrow conceptions of “the West.”

Applying Indigenous and decolonial theories, together with Michel Foucault’s conception of subjugated knowledge, Pagan Heart suggests that instead, paganism should be explored as an ancient and indigenous set of common beliefs and practices, at once ubiquitous and local, that includes the reverence of deities; the veneration of nature; rites celebrating the seasons and the life cycle; practices of healing, divination, and magic, often guided by ritual specialists; and arts and philosophies giving expression to pagan figures, concepts, and narratives.

In this first of five volumes, Pagan Heart focuses on the utilization of theories that contest absolutist language supporting the so-called death of paganism; and on the worship and veneration of ancient deities and kindred beings. Like the other volumes, this volume demonstrates that paganism has not only persisted over the course of millennia but that it has also undergone metamorphosis and innovation.

Most importantly, Pagan Heart emphasizes that the ancient gods did not die when Christian authorities forbade their worship and sought, in N. Scott Momaday’s terms, to commit deicide, but instead that they continue to exist and thrive.

Randy P. Conner, Ph.D., is the author of several works on the intersection of gender, sexuality, mythology, and the sacred. He teaches Humanities, including World Mythology, in the Chicago area.

Pan’s Daughter

Featured

The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton
Revised and Greatly Expanded Edition
Nevill Drury

Pan’s Daughter
The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton
(Revised & Greatly Expanded Edition)
Nevill Drury
Format: Softcover/326 pp/48 illustrations.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-41-1
£22.99/US$32/AUD$36(+$8p&p)


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During the 1950s and early 1960s the Sydney-based trance-artist and Pan-worshipper, Rosaleen Norton, was well known in Australia as ‘the Witch of Kings Cross’ and was frequently portrayed in the tabloid press as an evil ‘devil-worshipping’ figure from the red-light district. Norton attracted attention from both the public at large and also the local police for engaging in bizarre pagan sex-rituals with her lover, the poet Gavin Greenlees. Details of these activities would surface from time to time in the local courts when Norton was defending her metaphysical beliefs and seeking to defuse claims that her magical paintings and drawings were obscene. Norton was also associated with the scandal that eventually engulfed the professional career of renowned musical conductor, Sir Eugene Goossens who had arrived in Australia in 1947 and became a member of Norton’s magical coven six years later.

Norton dedicated her magical practice to the Great God Pan and to a lesser extent Hecate, Lilith and Lucifer. She was also intrigued by the visionary potential of Kundalini yoga, out-of-the-body trance exploration and Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic sex magick and combined all of these elements in her ritual activities.

Pan’s Daughter is the only biography of Rosaleen Norton and provides the most detailed and authoritative account of her magical beliefs and practices. First published in Britain by Mandrake in 1993, it is now reissued in a revised and expanded edition.

“Brilliantly researched…outrageous and inspiring”
Fiona Horne, author of Witch – A Personal Journey and Witch – A Magickal Year


“A fascinating study. Drury’s understanding of the occult and spiritual realms makes Norton’s art and life comprehensible” Tom Thompson, Sydney Morning Herald

Dr Nevill Drury (1 October 1947 – 15 October 2013) is best known for his publications on modern Western magic, shamanism and visionary art. For many years he worked in the Australian book industry as an editor and art book publisher and in 2008 he received his Ph.D from the University of Newcastle for a dissertation on the art and magical belifes of Rosaleen Norton.

Pan’s Road

An Ancient Egyptian Adventure
Mogg Morgan

 


Pan’s Road
(Fiction complement to The Bull of Ombos)
Mogg Morgan
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1869928-89x
£9.99/US$20, 234 pp 
Subjects: Occult Fiction/Egyptian Magick/Ancient Egypt.

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PAN’S ROAD
An Ancient Egyptian Adventure

The ancient hungry stones of Coptos in Upper Egypt have soaked up the stories of the inhabitants along with their blood. When archaeologists unearth a magician’s box in the rubble of an ancient Egyptian tomb, it propels Jay into a supernatural journey across space and time. She merges with the mysterious Zenobia, a native of ancient Coptos. Zenobia and her family are fleeing from the advancing Roman armies that are returning to their Egyptian frontier bent on punishing its rebellious citizens. The only escape from the frying pan of Coptos is into the fire of the Eastern desert. Their journey on Pan’s Road is fraught with new dangers but also new possibilities, as the protagonists are led to the heart of an ancient mystery in the lost city of Ombos – Citadel of Seth, the Egyptian god of Chaos.

Pharmakon

Drugs and The Imagination
Julian Vayne

Pharmakon
Drugs & The Imagination
Julian Vayne
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1869928946
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Chaos Magick/Entheogens.

Pharmakon / UK / £15.00

Pharmakon / USA & AUS / US$24.00

Click here for Kindle UK Edition

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Ranging across both published and anecdotal evidence, Pharmakon traces the story of drug use as a means of self-exploration. By examining apparently simple questions such as ‘what is a drug?’, Pharmakon deconstructs and reconstructs the idea of drug experience. Experiences that the author believes are fundamental to the process of self-actualisation and learning.

Naturally though this book discusses all sorts of things that are currently illegal in many nations the author would never wish to encourage anyone to break the Law. Moreover since this book contains information about how human beings can fly like birds, become transformed into animals and explore the farthest reaches of inner space it is, quite clearly, a work of fiction.

Julian Vayne is an occultist who has written on a number of esoteric subjects (witchcraft, the tarot and the sociology of contemporary Paganism). This book is aimed at both the general reader and those who are interested in the use of drugs in a spiritual context.

Delving into areas as diverse as philosophy and neurochemistry, this is a book that in both style and content seeks to invent a new understanding of drugs in culture….

Review
Pharmakon: Drugs and the imagination, by Julian Vayne
The philosopher’s stoned
By Gary Lachman
Published: 24 December 2006

‘Talking about your drug experiences is like talking about your dreams: it may be personally rewarding, but for others it’s a bore. As with dreams, the insights, visions and revelations that accompany some drug experiences can provide new perspectives on your life and help you to “know yourself”. The person on the receiving end of your dope stories, however, more times than not stifles an impatient “So what?” and wonders when you’ll get to the point. This is the paradoxical character of drug experiences: their profound subjectivity is a barrier to communication.

A handful of writers, De Quincey, Huxley, Burroughs and a few others, managed to cross this threshold and master the art of “trip-lit”. But most accounts of psychedelic journeys into inner space boil down to a less than informative “Awesome, man”. This may let us know that the voyage meant a lot to you, but it still leaves us in the dark as to what was so meaningful about it.

Julian Vayne argues that drugs can be an effective tool in self-exploration, and provides some useful theoretical scaffolding in understanding exactly what a “drug experience” is. Vayne argues that the mainstream materialist view of drugs is incomplete, and he makes clear that the chemical analysis of various substances like LSD, Ecstasy, cannabis and other popular items is only half the story. The importance of “set and setting” and our cultural expectations about exactly what a particular drug is supposed to do are equally crucial; our imagination and anticipation about what we will encounter after ingesting a magic mushroom are at least as significant as the psilocybin housed in the fungus itself. Drug experiences, Vayne contends, are learnt. They aren’t simply a matter of an automatic chemical reaction between my bloodstream and the toxin I’ve introduced to it.

He makes a similar point about how the same drug may have very different effects on different people. A lump of hash may lift a Baudelaire into poetic reverie, but the same lump may only sink the rest of us into befuddled sleep. LSD advocates in the 1960s made a similar discovery when it became painfully clear that taking acid didn’t automatically make people more spiritual and enlightened. The trip, good or bad, is as much in ourselves as in the drug.

Although Vayne has written several books on occult subjects, the occult or magical sensibility informing the book is curiously faint. The tone is academic, and a great part of the book is devoted to the mechanics of how drugs interact with our neurochemistry. He’s also at pains to anchor drug experiences in the post-modern discourse of transgression. This makes for a text in which Derrida turns up almost as often as Aleister Crowley. It’s refreshing to find occultism rubbing shoulders with other viewpoints, but the narrative is sometimes burdened with digressions on the Derridian “trace” and other notions.

Vayne’s most interesting insights come with his discussion of autism and schizophrenia as two poles of human consciousness: one an impenetrable contraction of the ego, the other a debilitating exposure to the chaos of the unconscious. Vayne makes a good argument that, rather than exceptional conditions, autism and schizophrenia are the extremes between which our ‘normal’ consciousness fluctuates; drugs for him are a means of compensating for imbalances between the two. Like many writers on mystical subjects, Vayne sees western culture as veering too much into an ego-bound autism. Hence the virtue of hallucinogens in providing a kind of controlled schizophrenia to even things out.

There are also some howlers. Theophile Gautier and the other members of the Club des Haschischins ate their cannabis, they didn’t smoke it. Julian Jaynes was a psychologist, not a historian. And I imagine that the “occultist W B Leadbeater” is an amalgam of W B Yeats and C W Leadbeater. If you’re arguing that drugs can be a tool in self-actualisation, it’s a good idea not to provide material for jokes about how stoned you were when you put your book together.

From Mandrake Speaks #100

‘A well researched and informative look at a variety of popular and not-so-well-known drugs. He deals with how they interact with our minds and bodies both chemically and psychologically, and how we perceive substances on a personal and society-wide scale. The similarities discussed between some drug experiences and some mental illnesses may lead to different viewpoints on both. Liberally sprinkled with folklore and anecdotes, Pharmakon examines the use of drugs in self-exploration employing a knowledgeable, yet down-to-earth approach that’s interesting and readable.’

More reviews see Erowid and Occultbooks

 

 

Phi-Neter

Featured

Power of The Egyptian Gods
Mogg Morgan

Phi-Neter
The Power of The Egyptian Gods
Mogg Morgan
Format: Softcover/228 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-56-5
£15.00 / US $24.00
Subjects: Egyptian Magick

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——————————————————————-

Phi-Neter, means ‘Power of the Gods’. In hieroglyphs this is represented by the hind-quarters of a leopard, a “Typhonian” creature, a predator who exemplifies the driving force of magick. In this book the author extends the core working material of Egyptian magick for himself and others to study and use. These techniques are manifest in the cult of Lord Seth – known as Typhon by the Greeks – and by all the other Gods of the Egyptian pantheon.

The Egyptian magician wields a power that was ultimately created by the Gods for the use of anyone who wishes to do their work. It is the same underlying power whether manipulated by Gods, priests, aristocrats, the common people or even the criminal. Same power, different ends.

“Ancient Egypt is an intellectual and spiritual world that is linked to our own by numerous strands of tradition.” – Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt

topics include: the false door; temple; Abramelin; magick squares; Aleister Crowley; the heptagram; vowel song; cardinality; twilight language; seven charaktêres for “deliverance”; ring of power; hermeticism; colour symbolism; number; egyptian “kabbalah”; hermeneia; the Star Goddess; the Book of Nuit; ephemeris of Egyptian decans; Books of the Nightworld (duat); Book of Gates; Egyptian liturgy; a Greco-Egyptian dice oracle; Short Invocations, prayers, valedictions, maledictions etc

decans-philae

 

RADICAL DESIRE

Kink & Magickal Sex
Mark Ramsden & Ruth Ramsden
(Erotica) (Fetish) (Non-Fiction)


Radical Desire
Kink & Magickal Sex
Mark Ramsden & Ruth Ramsden
Format: Softcover/140pp
ISBN: 978-1-906958-19-0
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Erotica/Fetish/Tantra/Erotic Art/Non-Fiction

UK edition

USA & AUS editions

RADICAL DESIRE
Re-written with much new material
Completely new illustrations & 3 bonus short stories

“The wit and wisdom of Mark Ramsden’s illuminating text delivers a gripping journey through a rich seam of sexual expression. Read this book, enjoy this book, for it deserves your utmost attention. Over 40? Fat? The style gurus say you’re not sexy, not horny, this book says ‘Bollocks!’ An essential reference work… And bloody good fun too.” – – John Carter

Radical Desire review on Amazon

“This slim (140 pages) book is part brutally honest, unpretentious and often hilarious autobiography, (page 28 is a full page photograph of Mr Ramsden’s pierced penis with the caption “The author making a dick of himself with his eighth Prince Albert upgrade”) part encyclopaedia of fetish (including Piercing, Corsets, Rubber, Switching and Scarification) part tour guide for fetish-loving tourists (“Some say the dungeon play (at Club Rub) is not as extreme as at certain clubs but then I don’t go to a club to see perverts fisting each other. I can get that at home.”) part fine visual art (all illustrations by Ruth Ramsden) and part fiction (2 kinky short stories, here’s an excerpt from “Madam Petra”: Sometime, somewhere, we are always together. Exchanging fragments of dreams and whispered prayers. In the long, slow, sweet dance of desire. Warmed by a pussycat smile.) and entirely satisfying.

Radical Desire: Kink & Magickal Sex, is not so much a book as it is an experience; one that kinksters, new, experienced, or jaded, should not miss.”
– Madeleine


The Author
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ramsden

ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHORS:

The DARK TANTRA TAROT is a synthesis of sex, fetishism and spirituality created by Mark & Ruth Ramsden.
www.darktantratarot.moonfruit.com

Read a review of the DARK TANTRA TAROT on the AECLECTIC TAROT WEBSITE
www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/dark-tantra/review.shtml”

BLUE MURDER at THE PINK PARROT
A flamboyant, surreal, stylish, erotic, noir thriller novel by Ruth Ramsden.


Read a sample chapter, read the reviews and get a copy of BLUE MURDER at THE PINK PARROT on www.amazon.co.uk website
www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Murder-at-Pink-Parrot/dp/1908122242

Rainbow Bridge

The Shakta Tantrika of the Uttarakaulas

John Power

The Rainbow Bridge – The Shakta Tantrika of the Uttarakaulas

John Power

ISBN: 978-0-9542286-3-7

£15.00+p&p / $24.00+p&p

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John was a student of Tantrik guru Dadaji Mahendranath [1911-91] in a correspondence that lasted from 1971 to 1991 and with occasional meetings. The last few years were difficult after Dadaji suffered strokes that affected his memory and ability to write with joined up lettering.

Dadaji was a Londoner by birth, whose maternal family included hereditary witches, and after meeting Aleister Crowley in his final years, when he was translating Chinese Taoist texts, he advised Dadaji to travel East if he wished to discover the pinnacle of mystical practices. At length, after interceding war activity, he did just that, via Australia to the far East, before settling in Gujarat, India. In so doing he did indeed bridge the range of Eastern and Western philosophies. It was in respect of this that he first borrowed the Norse image of the Rainbow Bridge when seeking to create a fusion of Eastern and Western practices.

The two main streams of activity that Dadaji was most keen to see made available to westerners came from the two main initiations he received in India: The Adi Nath lineage from Matsyendranath and the Uttarakaula Tantrik tradition of North India. 

The former emerged as the Arcane Magical Order of the Knights of Shambala, AMOOKOS; the latter as the Fellowship of Uttara Circles of Kaulas, which he asked John to organise for him. Most of the contents of this book are the collected essays created as guidance for those taking initiation in the group, and others with interest.

Otherwise, John has worked as an Art teacher and therapist in schools, colleges and prisons, having achieved his Masters Degree in Jungian Psychology and Art Therapy from London University in 1982. Some of his paintings illustrate this volume.

Gregory Peters is a writer and researcher who has written about Tantra, non-duality, and the intersection of East-West spiritual practices. He is an initiate of Adinatha and Uttara Kaula lineages of tantrika, as well as Dzogchen and western esoteric orders. His latest book was the Magickal Union of East & West from Llewellyn Publications.

Rosicrucian Chess of The Golden Dawn

Featured

Enochian Chess Series Vol. I
Steve Nichols

Khemetic Enochian ChessRosicrucian Chess of The Golden Dawn
Enochian Chess Series Vol.I
Steve Nichols
– over 200 illustrations many in colour.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-78-7
US$39.99 / UK£30.00

Click Here for Rosicrucian Chess of The Golden Dawn / USA & Elsewhere

Click Here for Rosicrucian Chess of The Golden Dawn / UK

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only £75.00 free postage / UK

Buy the Enochian Chess set (all three books) for only $100.00 free postage /USA (Elsewhere write for details)

This is the first in a trio of books that together form The Complete Enochian Chess. Enochian Chess in part comes from the Elizabethan system of Enochian Magic originated by the Court Astrologer, Dr John Dee. It was developed into its current form in Victorian times by SL MacGregor Mathers and William Wynn Westcott. This book includes a complete facsimile and commentary of Moina Mathers’s Alpha et Omega Enochian Chess papers together with a brief history of the game, notes on play and strategy, and instructions for Active divinatory methods utilised by this system. Notes and illustrations by Ithell Colquhoun (some previously unpublished) help explain this advanced and complete system of magick in its own right.

Originally it was only taught to Golden Dawn initiates who had risen to the rank of Zelator Adeptus Minor, and required a comprehensive knowledge of Tarot, Geomancy, Kabbalah, various magical formulae, the symbolism of the Candidate, the Ceremony of the Neophyte Grade, working knowledge of the art of Invocation and Banishing, Pentagram and Hexagram rituals, formation of Telesmatic Images, Sigils, and knowledge of the Enochian Tablets. Enochian Chess subsumes other Passive systems of divination such as tarot and astrology, and has powerful prophetic properties.

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Steve Nichols’ fully featured Windows ENOCHIAN CHESS SOFTWARE for one to four players can be downloaded by using the coupon code instructions inside together with evidence of purchase. The PC software makes this advanced and complex game immediately playable.

THE ENOCHIAN CHESS SOFTWARE CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM chaturanga.com

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Steve Nichols was the first to publish Enochian Chess sets in 1982 with support from Israel Regardie and others. Steve has given many demonstrations, readings and lectures about the game over the decades. This book includes new revelations about the Golden Dawn invention of Enochian Chess, with a particular spotlight on important Eastern occult sources previously hidden.

 

Sacred Mountains

Featured

Stories of The Mystic Mountains
An Anthology
Michael Berman

Sacred Mountains
Stories of The Mystic Mountains
An Anthology
Michael Berman
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781906958220
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Shamanism/Mysticism/Spirituality/Myths & Legends.

Click HERE for Sacred Mountains / USA

Click HERE for Sacred Mountains /UK

On the mountains of truth, you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What mountains mean to me: in one word, awe-inspiring. Although we can measure them, our minds are incapable of actually grasping the very small or the very large things in nature: neither atomic particles nor astronomical distances. How big is a mountain, how much does it weigh? Our limited minds can only cope with subjective assessments such as how difficult is it to climb, how dangerous would an avalanche be? So the feelings it produces are awe, a little fear, and possibly exhilaration if and when we think that we have conquered the mountain – but in reality we never can.
~ Professor David Hunt

All the stories presented in this collection contain shamanic elements, so the obvious starting point is to explain what is meant by this. The term ‘shaman’ is a controversial one. Initially employed by early anthropologists to refer to a specific category of magical practitioners from Siberia, the term is now widely used to denote similar practitioners from a variety of cultures around the world. This application of an originally culture-specific term to a more general usage has caused problems with regard to definition, with disagreements among scholars over whether certain features, such as soul flight or possession, or certain types of altered states of consciousness, should or should not be listed among the core characteristics of shamanism.
(Wilby, 2011, p.252.)

Introduction
What are Mountains for you?
Soul Captivation on White Bone Mountain
The Magic Brush and the Golden Mountain
The Legend of Amirani
The Story of Jumping Mouse
The Children of Hamelin: A Shamanic Journey into Mount Poppenberg
The Crystal Clear Waters of Mount Elbruz
The Vision Quest, Mount Sinai, and a Dream Fulfilled
Mount Ararat
Mount Koya-san, the Hermit’s Cave, and Fujiyama
Sacred Towers
The Fool on the Hill and the Book of Mysteries
The Tobacco of Harisaboqued
The Princess of the Tower

Appendix:
The Baal Shem Tov –
Rabbi, Religious Formulator or Shaman?

***
cover photograph by Joe Page shows Rennes Le Château seen from castle of Rennes Les Bains.


Launch 17th of January 2012 at the Georgian Embassy the author will talk about this book and give a reading. Starting promptly at 7.30 pm. The event is free and Georgian wine will be served at no cost too. The address is 4 Russell Gardens, West Kensington, London W14 8EZ. The hall holds about 60 people and we are hoping for a full house.

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RESOURCES FOR THE SACRED MOUNTAINS EXPERIENCE
Arts & Culture, Folklore, Myths & Legends, Food & Drink.

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Tbilisi Opera & Ballet Theatre
www.opera.ge

*

Georgia Cradle of Wine
www.georgia.gov.ge/5225

*

TAMADA,
Authentic Georgian Restaurant,
122 Boundary Road, St John’s Wood,
London NW8 0RH, UK.
www.tamada.co.uk


*

Secret Gospel of Mark

Featured

Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria
and four decades of academic burlesque
Robert Conner

The Secret Gospel of Mark
Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria
and four decades of academic burlesque
Robert Conner
Format: Softcover/160 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-68-8
£15.00+p&p / US $24.00+p&p
Subjects: Religious Studies/Spirituality

Click HERE for USA 

Click HERE for the UK Edition

Click here for Kindle Edition

While cataloguing material in the library of the monastery of Mar Saba in 1958, Morton Smith discovered a quotation from a letter of Clement of Alexandria copied in the end pages of a 17th-century collection of the letters of Ignatius. After more than a decade of a collaborative analysis of the find, Smith published his conclusions in 1973, setting off a firestorm of controversy in the New Testament studies guild.

In 1975, a Jesuit scholar, Quentin Quesnell, claimed the letter had been forged and implied that Smith was the forger, moving the focus of debate off the text itself and onto Smith. Since then the pages containing the letter have been removed from the book and possibly destroyed, while Catholic and evangelical writers, none of whom have ever seen the pages in question, continue to claim that Smith forged the letter.

Following his death in 1991, accusations against Smith took on a considerably more personal tone, highlighting his alleged homosexuality and by implication his dishonesty and moral perversity. Although the question of authenticity remains unresolved, the controversy has opened a window on the intellectually corrupt nature of apologetic New Testament studies, a subject of greater importance than the authenticity of early Christian texts.

 

Secrets of Asgard

An instruction in esoteric Rune wisdom
Vincent Ongkowidjojo

Secrets of Asgard
An instruction in esoteric Rune wisdom
Vincent Ongkowidjojo
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-31-2
£14.99 / US$24.00
Subjects: Northern Tradition/Runes/Odinism.

For UK Orders Click here

For USA & AUS Orders Click here

Foreword by Freya Aswynn

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this extraordinary book. A work of scholarship and intuition Vincent digs deep in the Well. The first part of the book is taken up with a discussion about the origins of Runes and the Celtic connection, very interesting.

Secrets of Asgard is aptly named as in this book Vincent forges new connections with Runes to reveal a multidimensional web of correspondences between other schools of thought partaking of the perennial Wisdom Tradition. Expanding the Runic meanings and offering a deeper layer of Rune might than ever before.

Like me, this author’s native language is Flemish/Dutch and so plugging into the unconscious more linguistic aspects are uncovered and discussed proving fascinating new insights into the Runes: lots and lots of new stuff, subtle seemingly little things so small that no one me included actually took the time to look at!

Vincent brings in a lot more of the natural world, as in his section on Berkana. It is clear that this monumental Work contains a wealth of scholarship as well as insights, especially in the practical applications of Runes.

Vincent interprets the 3 aettir in a sociological context according to Dumezil, however, he allows for evolution from thrall to Jarl within an initiatic concept; he also recognized a correspondence with the astrological crosses, something I had overlooked, I can honestly say that Vincent has taken the whole kit and caboodle to a new level.

Correlations with the writings of Alice Bailey are discovered and discussed. This book will appeal to Runesters and Heathens who cultivate an open mind and wish to go beyond religion into the Initiatic Mysteries of the Runes and the Gods.

About the Gods as well as their Runes, Vincent offers some very interesting differing and sometimes radically opposing views to my own, solidly backed up by an alternative look, lore and his own intuition. Invocations and instructions for successful Rune magick are a large and rich resource. This book has something for everyone, sound lore and deep magick. This excellent work shows a deep and powerful occult current as well as keeping true to the tradition. Fine scholarship and impeccable integrity breathe through this work.

May it open many doors in the minds of those who wish to explore beneath and beyond exoteric heathenry.

Freya Aswynn

Contents
Part one focusses centres on the meaning of the individual runes and the myths, explaining the Aettir alongside Northern mythology. It describes each of the gods as well as the Nine Worlds etc. The second part centres on the application of the system, namely magic and divination and include rituals and exercises.

A thesis of practical rune magic is developed which is based on the Havamal 144 stanza. The analysis concludes that the Runes were traditionally regarded as actual spirits. The stanza explains how to make your own set as well as other talismanic objects. The practice of galdr-singing is discussed in more depth to complement the Havamal 144 techniques. Then, a discourse is given on the most common Ancient Germanic magical formulae. They complement the practical work on talismanic objects.

A separate chapter is given on divinatory practices. Useful information on dreamwork is added and numerous other exercises are used to make contact with the subconscious mind through auto-suggestion, and many other useful ritual techniques and practices.

Visit Vincent Ongkowidjojo’s website for the latest updates on talks, courses and workshops in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands.
www.alhaz.be