Fox Magic – Handbook of Chinese Witchcraft and Alchemy in the Fox Tradition
Jason Read
978-1-914153-07-5 (pbk) 168pp
Special “Altar” edition, jacketed case laminate, colour images
978-1-914153-08-2 (Jacketed cased laminate) 172pp
£30 UK Order
$40 USA Order
Fox Magic explores the traditions surrounding the Fox Immortal and the Nine-Tailed Fox, figures in East Asian folklore and magical culture associated with transformation, enchantment, spirit contact, and hidden knowledge.
Drawing on Chinese and Japanese traditions, Jason Read examines the fox not simply as an animal of folklore but as a powerful liminal being: at different times, a teacher, trickster, seducer, spirit ally, and magical intermediary.
The book presents legends in which the Nine-Tailed Fox transmits secrets of witchcraft and alchemy to devotees, and traces connections between fox traditions, the ancient Wu shamans, Tantric influences and later spirit cults. It also considers the historical and cultural role of the Fox Immortal and the ways in which beliefs about foxes developed within Asian religious and magical practices.
A substantial part of Fox Magic is concerned with practice.
Read introduces ritual material drawn from Chinese grimoires for approaching and invoking the Fox Immortal as a magical tutor, together with traditions of glamour, fascination and enchantment associated with fox cults. The book also explores the esoteric Tachikawa-ryū tradition and what it describes as the white branch of death and the red branch of sexuality.
This gives the book an unusual position between folklore, magical history and practical grimoire.
The fox is an especially appropriate figure for this territory because it resists simple categories. It belongs to the threshold: between human and animal, attraction and danger, deception and revelation, the ordinary world and the world of spirits.
Rather than reducing the Fox Immortal to a single symbolic meaning, Fox Magic explores the contradictions that have made fox spirits such enduring magical figures.
For readers interested in Chinese magic, witchcraft, spirit traditions, Tantra and the magical folklore of East Asia, Fox Magic offers an unusual introduction to a tradition rarely treated in detail in Western occult publishing.
The Special Altar Edition expands the presentation with colour images in a jacketed case-laminate format, designed for readers who want a more substantial edition of the work.