MANDRAKE

Crowley a beginners guide UK / £15.00

In Beneath the Pleasure Zones 1 – The Rupture Paul Green created a dystopian world disrupted by the Qliphothic forces of chaos. Its sequel The Polyverse takes us deeper into the inscapes of a ravaged Britain, where the pagans of Leynebridge, the digerati of London and battling fundamentalist militias all struggle to control the flux of reality, under the overview of those sinister cyber-demons the Quantum Brothers.

In the midst of these upheavals, Lucas, poet and aspiring scribe of Thoth is still seeking Carla, his capricious sex-goddess, while Lombard the manic virtual reality tycoon undergoes a psycho-sexual metamorphosis that transforms his strategies of control. Ultimately things fall apart, on an apocalyptic scale, taking characters on journeys where everything they most love appears to be destroyed. Magicks work, but not as expected and signs in the sky can be deceptive. But from this maelstrom of horror, wonder and bleak farce, the possibility of Albion’s new beginning emerges.

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. insert link here?

‘Good storytelling always leaves you wanting to know what comes next… Plus Green has a talent for some splendidly epigrammatic and surprising phraseology. The bizarre events become satires for our fears and desires and fantasies about where magic and science and social fragmentation might take us…’ (Peter Carroll on Beneath the Pleasure Zones – The Rupture)

SIDE STORIES

Posted on December 29, 2015 by mogg mandrake

SIDE STORIES by A D Harvey

BUY IT NOW for only £9.99+p&p

ISBN 9781906958-930 £25 hardcover

Collected here for the first time, are the masterly short stories of A D Harvey, many of them erotic, some of them distinctly odd, and a couple downright lewd. Linked together they, like a novel, shed light on one of the less conventional scholarly careers of recent times.

In 2013 more than eighty Internet sites round the world took up the story of A.D.Harvey’s literary spoofs following his outing in The Times Literary Supplement, thereby further outraging an academic establishment which had had it in for him ever since he had broken ranks by obtaining a Ph.D. at Cambridge only six years after sitting his A-levels. The author of eight scholarly monographs, numerous articles in academic quarterlies, three novels and a slim volume of verse, A.D.Harvey is (despite occasional spoofs) a serious if sometimes idiosyncratic writer and his gift for style, cogency and psychological insight is demonstrated by a collection of his short stories and other pieces now published under the title Side Stories by Mandrake of Oxford.

A.D.Harvey is a historian and literary scholar whose work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish and also the author of three novels, including Warriors of the Rainbow (2000), described by The Guardian as ‘weirdly compelling’ and by The Times as ‘intriguing….both awe-inspiring and,frankly, potty’. His short stories, many of them erotic, some of them distinctly odd, and a couple downright lewd, are collected here for the first time, together with half a dozen other pieces that shed light on one of the less conventional scholarly careers of recent times.Also included: A D Harvey’s nordic noir Mind-Sprung

Chris Allaun

Posted on November 10, 2015 by mogg mandrake

(Author photo credit: Ray DeJongh)

Chris Allaun has been studying paganism and the occult since 1992. He is an ordained minister with The Brotherhood of the Phoenix and has been an initiate of Traditional Witchcraft since 2002. He is also a Native American Pipe Carrier and studies that path of the Red Road. He teaches classes and workshops on magick, healing, shamanism, and necromancy. He has taught at pagan festivals such as Pagan Spirit Gathering and Between the Worlds. He continues to study and teach the magickal arts to those who seek to balance the three worlds in their own lives.

Chris Allaun: Author, Teacher, Healer
www.chrisallaun.com
https://www.facebook.com/chrisallaun.author/?rc=p

Crowley

Featured

Posted on September 11, 2015 by mogg mandrake

A Beginners Guide
John S. Moore & John Patrick Higgins

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)

Steve Nichols

Posted on June 9, 2015 by mogg mandrake

11414576_10153446775819974_1842725470_n

Steve Nichols, a successful tournament chess player in his youth, has edited a national Games magazine, studied Philosophy as an undergrad with AJ Ayer, developed a revolutionary Theory of Mind (M.V.T.), lost at table tennis to Arthur C Clark, discussed John Dee and Paracelsus with HRH Prince Charles, founded the Posthuman movement in 1988, published national magazines about board games and magick, run MENSA international occult SIG, studied Middle Egyptian language at Leiden University, gained an MSc in Neural Computing, practices psychotherapist and is Member BPsP (Brit. Psych. Soc). Steve has published strategy software including Shogi (which reached the Grand Final world Shogi computer championships in Tokyo) and Chaturanga in addition to Enochian Chess, and has authored books including The Primal Eye (MVT), The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun, Taro of the Four Worlds, ZENET: Egyptian Game of Immortality, and Minor Arcanaii of the Four Winds.

P is For Prostitution

Featured

Posted on May 15, 2015 by mogg mandrake

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

Click HERE for UK

Click HERE for USA & AUS

Click here for Kindle Edition

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.

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

Shape-Shifters & Their Stories

Featured

Posted on April 22, 2015 by mogg mandrake

The Golem; Lilith; Werewolf; The Dybbuk; Silkie; and more
Michael Berman

Shape-Shifters & Their Stories
Michael Berman
Format: Softcover/192 pp, 24 fascinating Illustrations.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-66-4
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Folklore//Myths & Magic/Fairy Tales/Shamanism/Spirituality.

Click HERE for Shape-Shifters & Their Stories / USA

Click HERE for Shape-Shifters & Their Stories / UK

“Long ago the trees thought they were really people
Long ago the mountains thought they were really people
Long ago the animals thought they were really people
Someday, they will say
Long ago the humans thought they were really people”
Constance O’Day-Flannery, Shifting Love

Shape-shifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. In its broadest sense, shape-shifting occurs when a being (usually human) either (1) can change its shape into that of another person, creature, or other entity or (2) finds its shape involuntarily changed by someone else. If the shape change is voluntary, its cause may be an act of will, a magic word or magic words, a potion, or a magic object. If the change is involuntary, its cause may be a curse or spell, a wizard’s or magician’s or fairy’s help, a deity’s will, a temporal change such as a full Moon or nightfall, love, or death. The transformation may or may not be purposeful.

The desire to be different in some way to match some ideal promoted through advertising has become an obsession, especially for vulnerable younger members of society. Perhaps the pressure to conform to some unrealistic ideal has always been with us, but surely not to the extent that now is the case. And it is this desire that helps to account for the current interest in shape-shifting as it would seem to provide a means of achieving the goal to bring about change. However, as many of the tales in this collection show, it is only by coming to terms with who we are that peace of mind can truly be ours again.

Arcane Veil

Featured

Posted on April 7, 2015 by mogg mandrake

Ten Discourses on The Craft and The History of Magic
Shani Oates

Continue reading →

Mind-Sprung

Featured

Posted on February 19, 2015 by mogg mandrake

AD Harvey
(Crime Fiction)

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

UK Buyer

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.”

Secret Gospel of Mark

Featured

Posted on January 23, 2015 by mogg mandrake

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

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.

The Dionysian Spirit

Featured

Posted on January 12, 2015 by mogg mandrake

Sean Fitton

The Dionysian Spirit
Sean Fitton
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-65-7
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Ancient Greece/
Greek Mysteries/Myths/Magic/Paganism/Spirituality.

Click Here for The Dionysian Spirit / USA

Click here for the Kindle USA edition

Click Here for The Dionysian Spirit / UK

Dionysos is an obscure Greek god of wine and theatre for many people. For others, he is so much more.

The Dionysian Spirit examines the essence of what Dionysos is all about, both as a deity and as a cultural and social force. It looks at the relation of Dionysos with his opposite number Apollo. The twin gifts of Apollo and Dionysos are ekstasis (ecstasy) and entheos (enthusiasm) and have informed and enlivened our lives and cultures from ancient times right to the present day and beyond.

The Dionysian Spirit – like the art of a good party – has always been with us and now, in many ways, we need it more than ever.

Contents: Devotional to Dionysos / The Visualisation / The Myths of Dionysos / Dionysian Heroes / Dionysos Around the World / Dionysos Across The Millenium / Dionysos Goes Forth

A.D.Harvey

Posted on November 19, 2014 by mogg mandrake

A.D.Harvey was born and brought up in Colchester, read history at St John”s College Oxford, obtained a Ph.D. at Cambridge, taught there for some years, and later became an antiques dealer.He is the author of a number of historical works that were favourably reviewed in the national press and of the novels WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW (Bloomsbury 2000) and OXFORD:THE NOVEL (Brewin 2012).His short stories have appeared in LONDON MISCELLANY and CRITICAL QUARTERLY.

Seán Fitton

Posted on November 13, 2014 by mogg mandrake

Seán has been a practising Pagan for more years than he cares to remember and a follower of Dionysos for about 15 of those. He lives in the wilds of north Manchester with his wife and carer, Sara, children and pets and runs a local house moot. This is his first book and he intends to write another if he can squeeze it in between acting and musician jobs.

William Lilly: Magician, Astrologer & Adept

Link

William Lilly,
Magician, Astrologer & Adept
Peter Stockinger & Sue Ward

Foreword by David Conway

Format: Softcover, 252pp
ISBN: 978-1-906958-62-6

£14.99+p&p / US$26.00+p&p

Click HERE for the UK edition

Click HERE for USA & Elsewhere

Click here foe KINDLE edition

Triple Peter Stockinger UK

Triple Peter Stockinger USA

Born less than a year before the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, William Lilly lived during one of the most turbulent times in English history. Like so many of his generation, he had to deal with the plague, was drawn into the madness of the English Civil War and was forced to take sides, and witnessed the regicide of King Charles I. Lilly lived in a time of enormous religious and social upheaval, but his astrology remained the outer expression of a magical world-view, based on hermetic and neo-Platonic principles and rooted in the 16th century.

This book provides the reader with a thorough introduction to the world of William Lilly, the famous 17th century astrologer and magician. It brings together transcripts of his autobiography and of some of his most important works. It also includes Peter Stockinger and Sue Ward’s Monster of Ingratitude, an investigative journey offering new insights into the notorious contention between Lilly and the astrologer John Gadbury. Amongst other valuable information, the book contains:

* The Life of William Lilly, Student in Astrology

* Monster of Ingratitude
This research contains brief biographies of Lilly and Gadbury. It shows how their enmity began, developed and ended, including details of the rather one-sided pamphlet war. An in-depth study of published material, timelines and bibliographic entries of all primary sources used are also included and provide the grounds for a different explanation from that commonly proposed.

”The Last Magician is a very worthwhile work. Although some parts are hard going for the non-specialist, others are of value to anyone with an interest in Enlightenment esotericism and seventeenth-century English history in general. — Clive Prince.”

Matthew Levi Stevens

Posted on August 11, 2014 by mogg mandrake

Matthew Levi Stevens was born 31st of October 1966, shortly before Midnight. He is a writer, researcher, and online commentator. Awareness of the Occult and ‘chance encounters’ with certain artist-practitioners determined his path at a young age.

His published works include A Moving Target: Encounters with William Burroughs (Beat Scene Press, 2012), and in collaboration with C J Bradbury Robinson, A Way With Words (WhollyBooks, 2013.) In addition, he has written on Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant, and appeared in the anthologies Occult Traditions (Numen, 2012) and CUT UP! (Oneiros Books, 2014), and has also been a regular contributor to a number of magazines and online forums, including Beatdom, Beat Scene, Chaosphere, New Dawn, Reality Sandwich, Reality Studio and The Modern Review.

With his partner, the artist Emma Doeve, he is currently working on a Grimoire inspired by the Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri. They maintain an occasional blog together at whollybooks.wordpress.com

The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs

Featured

Posted on August 6, 2014 by mogg mandrake

The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs
Matthew Levi Stevens
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-64-0
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Counter-Culture/Magic/Occult/Biography/American Underground.

Click HERE for The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs / UK

Click HERE for The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs / USA

Click here for Kindle

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason. Among primitive people they say that if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that.”
– William S. Burroughs

Fully revised and expanded from the limited edition chapbook that first appeared in 2012, The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs is the first ever in-depth consideration of the significance of Magic and the Occult in the Life & Work of the writer and counter-cultural icon.

In Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs, his biographer Ted Morgan wrote:

‘As the single most important thing about Graham Greene was his viewpoint as a lapsed Catholic, the single most important thing about Burroughs was his belief in the magical universe. The same impulse that lead him to put out curses was, as he saw it, the source of his writing…’

‘To Burroughs behind everyday reality there was the reality of the spirit world, of psychic visitations, of curses, of possession and phantom beings…’

From the Introduction to The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs:

In talking about The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs I am really thinking of two things:

Firstly, and probably most obvious, is the material that appears in the output of Burroughs the Writer that can be seen as describing or referring to some magical, mystical or occult idea – Invocations of Elder Gods of Abominations, descriptions of Sex-Magick rituals, references to amulets, charms, ghosts, omens and spells – all the thematic set-dressing that we all know and love, from Hammer Horror Movies to Weird Tales, from H. P. Lovecraft to Dennis Wheatley and The X-Files…

Secondly, there is the personal interest and involvement of Burroughs the Man with belief systems and practices that come from those strange ‘Other’ territories that lay outside the bounds of either conventional mainstream religion or scientific materialism – explorations of L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Konstanin Raudive’s Electronic Voice Phenomena, Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Accumulator; also partaking of the Vine-of-the-Soul with Amazonian shamans, attending the Rites of Pan in the Rif Mountains outside Morocco, participating in a Sweat-Lodge with Native American Indian medicine men – and, latterly, an engagement with that most Post-Modern of Occultisms, Chaos Magic.

The material considered has been distilled from archival sources, correspondence, interviews, and of course, published works. As well as his own personal contact with Burroughs and his lifelong study of the Man and his Work, the author also draws from a wide range of former associates – collaborators, friends, lovers, and students – including C. J. Bradbury Robinson, Michael Butterworth, David Conway, Phil Hine, Graham Masterton, Malcolm Mc Neill, and others.

As well as his own contact with the likes of Genesis P-Orridge, John Balance & Peter Christopherson of Coil, and writer Terry Wilson, back in 1980s London, he has also had unprecedented access to the papers of Cabell McLean, a young writer who was William’s companion, lover & student, c.1976-1983.

—

Sometime in the nineteen-seventies, following a reprint of my book, Magic: An Occult Primer, a letter was forwarded to me by my then publisher. Poorly typed and in an envelope which, unless my memory deceives me, bore no postage stamp, it came from William S. Burroughs. I still have it somewhere. In it the writer made plain his interest in magic. In real magic that is, not the smoke and mirrors kind.

Given that Burroughs’ tireless ambition was to encounter a reality beyond that accessible to our five senses, with magic perceived as an effective means to that end, it is remarkable that the subject has hitherto received but scant attention.

This work, by Matthew Levi Stevens, who must have encountered Burroughs at around the time he wrote to me, sets out to make up for that deficit. In it he chronicles the man’s interest and examines the part magic and occultism generally played both in his life and in his work.

Stevens sets about the task with gusto, indicative of his respect and, indeed, affection for “Uncle Bill”, as well as his familiarity with the topic itself. He draws on Burroughs’ own writings, and on those of the growing number of people, supporters and critics alike, who have commented on him and his literary output.

It is a job well done. And one that is all the more welcome because long overdue . . .

– David Conway, 2014.

Seidways

Featured

Posted on August 4, 2014 by mogg mandrake

Shaking, Swaying and Serpent Mysteries
(was Techniques of Obsession)
Jan Fries

Shaking, Swaying & Serpent Mysteries
Jan Fries
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1869928369
£14.99/US$24
Subjects: Northern Tradition/Odinism/Runes/Shamanism.

Buy Seidways UK

Buy Seidways USA & rest

Seidways
From the author of Helrunar – manual of rune magick and Visual Magick, a handbook of freestyle shamanism, come the definative study of magical trance and possession techniques. The author is inspired by the Nordic tradition of Seidr, said to have been taught to the human race by Odin. The book provides an extensive survey of the manifestation of this powerful technique through several related magical traditions – shamanisn, mesmerism, draconian cults and the nightside of European paganism.

Seething is probably the most useful magical technique I have ever learned. I first was taken by the pleasure of it. My body felt warm and sensual, and seething in the hips felt quite sexual. I liked the feeling of my body taking over where the shaking was first voluntary – but I could still have some control, making the shaking stronger or more subtle. After a while I started to see visions – something that very rarely happens to me. I could see (with my physical eyes, not astrally!) the surface of the land in the centre of the circle rippling, like waves of energy. It was a really moving experience in a site that – until then – had not been particularly ‘special’ to me… it ..has had a major impact upon my magical work which used to be largely indoors, as at last I have found a way that I can work outdoors. This gives my magical work a potency that it simply didn’t have before. – Shantidevi quoted in chapter twelve ‘Rhythms and the Mind’

Reviews:

-‘Very highly recommended’ – The Cauldron

‘Jan Fries shows himself to be one of the most innovative and creative of contemporary magical authors. This is the best book on practical magick that I have seen for some time… an extremely useful body of techniques which any practically-minded magician will be able to use. Beautifully illustrated…Mandrake should be applauded for producing yet another fine book of modern magical practice and thought. Buy it, you won’t be disappointed!’
– Phil Hine in Chaos International 22

‘The text is always interesting to read no matter where you start from. With such a broad spectrum of content, Seidways is suited to anyone studying shamanism for the first time, and wants to avoid a pile of new-age crap. It’s also a great all-rounder for anyone with a general interest in European mythology. Seidways will become one of the more thumbed books in my collection, and I am sure the collection of anyone else who buys it.’
– Sant reviewing in White Dragon

Craft of the Untamed

Featured

Posted on June 1, 2014 by mogg mandrake

An inspired vision of Traditional Witchcraft
Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold

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.

THE ODIN BROTHERHOOD

Featured

Posted on May 24, 2014 by mogg mandrake

6th Edition
Enlarged with 50 pages of new material
Mark L. Mirabello
(Non-Fiction) (Odinism) (Secret Societies)

The Odin Brotherhood
Mark L. Mirabello
6th Edition enlarged with 50 pages of new material.
Format: Softcover/180 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-63-3 (was 9781869928711)
£15.00 /US $24.00
Subjects: Odinism/Northern Tradition/Secret Societies/Non-Fiction Account

Click HERE for The Odin Brotherhood / UK

Click HERE for The Odin Brotherhood /USA

Triple Peter Stockinger USA & Elsewhere

‘When the world is pregnant with lies, a secret long hidden will be revealed.’- An Odinist Prophecy

Just like the Cannibal Within, a chance encounter, although this time in the famous Atlantis Bookshop, blossomed into a dialogue between the author and the anonymous adept of Odin. Called an “occult religion” for adepts, a “creed of iron” for warriors, and a “secret society” for higher men and women who value “knowledge, freedom and power,” the Odin Brotherhood honors the gods and goddesses of the Norse pantheon.

This non-fiction book details the legends, the rituals, and the Mysteries of an ancient and enigmatic movement.

Contents
Introduction
Introduction to the Mandrake Edition
The Dialogue
Odinism and the Mysteries of the Past
The Odin Brotherhood Today and the Heroic Ideal
On Polytheism and the Nature of the Gods
The Eddaic Verses and the Three Ages of Man
Why Venerate the Odinist Gods?
The Contacts between Men and Gods
The God Odin and His Mysteries
The Goddess Frigg and the Rite of Marriage
The God Thor, the Nemesis of Titans
The Goddess Sif, the Mischief of Loki, and the Skill of the Rock Dwarfs
The God Heimdall and “The-Sojourn-of-the-Brave”
The God Bragi, the Holy Words, and the Seasonal Rites
The Fair Goddess Idun and Her Enchanted Fruit
Brave Tyr, the Warrior God
The God Njord, Magic, and the Vanir Gods
The God Frey and the Elves
The Goddess Freyja, the Lovely Patroness of Birth
The God Balder and the Adventure of Death
The Goddess Nanna and the Odinist Death Rite
The Legend of “The-Mountain-of-Promise”
Destiny, Ragnarok, and the Mysteries of the Future
Epilogue –
Eddaic Sources
Works on Modern Odinism
Reviews of Earlier Editions of
The Odin Brotherhood

Three New Chapters:
Supplement
Odin Lives Interview
Secret Societies: A Brief Essay
War, Odin, and Valhalla

————

Reviewed by Tyler Ferguson
in Dagobert’s Revenge

‘Odinism is an ancient religion that acknowledges the gods by fostering thought, courage, honor, light and beauty. Older than history, Odinism is all that was called wisdom when the world was new and fresh.’

‘So begins The Odin Brotherhood: A Non-Fiction Account of Contact with a Pagan Secret Society by Dr. Mark L. Mirabello. This slender work about the origins and meaning of the Odin Brotherhood and Odinism as a religion was originally published in 1992, and a revised and expanded fifth edition of the book will be published by Mandrake of Oxford in England.

For many, the gods honored by The Odin Brotherhood are the gods of our ancestors. Gods long believed forgotten. But the Brotherhood, a secret society for all “extraordinary mortals who embrace the principles of Odinism” which claims to be 5 centuries old, has preserved the ancient traditions.

The Brotherhood was formed during the height of persecution at the hands of Christianity. “Purified by violence, Odinism became a religion for the highest form of Hero.” From those persecuted heroes, the Odin Brotherhood was born.

To the Odinist, supreme courage is “the one against the all” and no one fits that definition better than those who honored the old gods despite the wrath of the Church.

The Brotherhood’s violent beginnings are remembered in a legend telling of a corrupt Christian priest who arranged the execution of a young widow who was found honoring the old gods. Three children were forced to watch as the priest incited a mob to murder the women for her pagan ways. Later, these three children–two boys and one girl– through ritual made contact with the murdered woman. The children were given three directives in a “necromantic” communication from a woman shrouded in white linen, and these three directives would be the foundation for what would become the Odin Brotherhood. The book states that since that time “The Brotherhood bears the teeth marks of Christianity, but it has survived.”

The book continues by explaining the relationship the Odinist has with the gods. The Brotherhood explains in wonderful detail the characteristics and names of several of the major gods that they honor. In these explanations the reader will find the essence of the Brotherhood, and their ceremonies of initiation, birth, marriage and death, honor system, ideals of morality, systems for daily life and an understanding of the Odinist’s afterlife.

Ragnarok, the Odinist apocalypse, is also graphically explained–again providing crucial insight into the understanding of the Brotherhood’s relationship with the gods. A crucial understanding of the gods of Odinism is the understanding that they are flawed. The reader will come to appreciate this significant detail and the importance of such ironies.

The body of the text ends with the end of Ragnarok. The gods have perished and the world destroyed but all is not over. For the Odinist believes in “The-Law-of-the-Endless-Circle”-that “nothing dies forever”-and that all things will occur again and again. And with this belief come the understanding of the final statement of the book and the first utterance after Ragnarok “Hail to the gods that are dead! They are the future race of Lords!”

The author in a somewhat unorthodox style presents clear details of the Brotherhood that may otherwise be hard to gain in the pages of an elaborate work. From the Brotherhood comes the explanation of Odinism as a religion, the details of ritual and ceremony and even the graphic telling of events believed yet to come. The reader will find this work accessible in its simplicity, yet busting with critical information regarding a society that few realize exists. I highly recommend this book for the student of the Occult.

I wish to end this review with a few quotes from the book:

“Odinism is a creed of Iron”

“When the gods made man, they made a weapon”

“Beware of gods that cannot laugh”

“Before he dies – before he penetrates the mystery of the outer blackness – every Odininst must pass on the wisdom of his secret”

To the astute reader of Dr. Mirabello’s works– at least the two reviewed for Dagobert’s Revenge— one will find additional insight into the mystery of The Cannibal Within in the pages of this earlier work.’

‘. . .will fascinate students of Norse religion and medieval secret societies’
– The Cauldron

The Odin Brotherhood Website
www.odinbrotherhood.com

Magic in Christianity

Featured

Posted on May 16, 2014 by mogg mandrake

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

Click HERE for USA & Elsewhere

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.

A German Stargazer’s Book of Astrology

Featured

Posted on March 8, 2014 by mogg mandrake

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

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA & Rest of the world

Triple Peter Stockinger UK

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

Elmer Crowley

Featured

Posted on February 21, 2014 by mogg mandrake

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

Beneath the Pleasure Zones

Featured

Posted on February 2, 2014 by mogg mandrake

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.

Click HERE for USA/ AUS

Click HERE for UK

– BENEATH THE PLEASURE ZONES –THE POLYVERSE

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. There’s 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 –

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

The Ritual Year in Ancient Egypt

Featured

Posted on January 10, 2014 by mogg mandrake

Lunar & Solar Calendars and Liturgy
Mogg Morgan

The Ritual Year in Ancient Egypt
Lunar and Solar
Calendars and Liturgy
Mogg Morgan
ISBN: 9781906958138 (2011) 272pp
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Ancient Egypt/Egyptian Magick

Click Here For / USA

Click Here For / UK

Click here for Kindle USA edition

The very oldest Egyptian ritual calendar was lunar. The evidence for this is very complex and in the words of Professor Leo Depuydt, “does not exactly jump out at you!” This ancient lunar calendar continued a veiled existence alongside the dominant solar or civil year. Many details are lost so the project of this book is to bring together what has survived. Revealed here is a very ancient pantheon of gods, including Set, Min, & Hathor, one for each month of the lunar year. I have provided for them a unique collection of liturgy, rituals and prayers as may have been offered in the homes, sanctuaries and temples of original Egypt.

Many of these feasts of Ancient Egypt were celebrated on the phases of the moon – principally when it was new or full. So whatever your favorite god or goddess, make offerings on either of these days and you will be reviving an old and authentic form of the Ancient Egyptian magical religion.To complete the picture I present over several chapters all the technical details of the lunar month as well as its more well known civil replacement. Here you will find information on how certain key days were calculated when needed. These later chapters also provide related material on the mysteries of the Northern Constellations.

Finally, there are descriptions of the thirty lunar days of each month and lunar omens. So in total, this is the most complete and authoritative guide to the ritual wheel of the year at all stages of its use in the Ancient Egyptian magical religion.

Desert Fox Oracle

Posted on December 1, 2013 by mogg mandrake

“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.

Buy US Edition $22.00

Buy UK Edition (£12.99)

Companion book Click for download

Making Talismans

Featured

Posted on November 18, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Nick Farrell

—

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

Nevill Drury

Posted on October 15, 2013 by mogg mandrake

(1947-2013)
Rest in Peace Nevill

NEVILL DRURY PhD is an independent historical researcher whose specialist interests include modern Western magic, shamanism, transpersonal psychology and visionary art. Born in England in 1947 but resident in Australia since 1963, Nevill has worked as an international art-book publisher, lecturer and magazine editor and is now a full-time writer. He is the author/co-author/editor of over sixty books and his work has been published in 25 countries and 18 languages.

His most recent publications include Stealing Fire from Heaven: the Rise of Modern Western Magic (Oxford University Press 2011); Homage to Pan (Creation Oneiros 2009), The Dictionary of Magic (Watkins 2005) and The New Age: the History of a Movement (Thames & Hudson 2004). He received his Ph.D from the University of Newcastle in 2008 for a dissertation on the visionary art and magical beliefs of Rosaleen Norton (awarded ‘Best Humanities Ph.D’. in that year).

Nevill died 15th October 2013 aged 66.

Phi-Neter

Featured

Posted on August 22, 2013 by mogg mandrake

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

Click Here for Phi-Neter / UK

——————————————————————-

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

Deep Magic Begins Here . . .

Featured

Posted on July 19, 2013 by mogg mandrake

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

Buy UK Edition

Buy US edition

Click here for Kindle USA

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!

The Way of The Odin Brotherhood

Featured

Posted on July 10, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Jack Wolf
(Non-Fiction) (Odinism) (Secret Societies)

The Way of The Odin Brotherhood
Jack Wolf
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-53-4
£15.00 / US$24.00
Subjects: Northern Tradition/Odinism/Secret Societies/Non-Fiction Account.

Click HERE for USA & AUS

Click HERE for UK

Click here for Kindle USA edition

‘Would you know more?’

It began with a simple question, sent from an unknown e-mail address, and it kindled the fires of a quest that would take him on a journey of discovery spanning several years; a journey that would lead him closer to the enigmatic secret society known as the Odin Brotherhood.

Continuing a quest for understanding which had been started by his mentor years earlier, and following a trail of cryptic clues and mysterious lore, Canadian author Jack Wolf set out on a journey into the workings of this largely undocumented secret society. Accompanied by a mysterious informant known only as Crow, he embarks on a series of adventures that will ultimately draw him closer to penetrating the history, lore and secrets of this elder pagan fraternity – an entity which has existed for nearly six hundred years.

Dr Mark Mirabello’s Foreword to Jack Wolf’s The Way of the Odin Brotherhood

“I have sometimes wondered if it were possible that unrecognized forces of the past or present– or even the future– work through the thoughts and actions of living men.”
– Robert E. Howard, December 14, 1933

Mysteries have always intrigued me.

For example, Vallalar, also known as Ramalinga Adigal, disappeared from his one-room residence in Mettukuppam, India on January 30, 1874. After he had given his last and most famous lecture on the “nature of the powers that lie beyond us and move us,” he locked himself into his home and told his followers never to open the door. He said anyone entering would find nothing.

Vallalar’s seclusion generated rumours, and the British Government finally forced the door in May. They found an empty room and no clues. The facts were reported in the Madras District Gazetteer.

In my own life, I have experienced the enigma of the Odin Brotherhood. This secret society, composed of men and women who use darkness and stealth to preserve the lore of old gods and the purity of old ways, thrives on mystery.

Who are they? Why are they here? Why does legend surround their origin?

No one really knows the answers to such questions, but it is clear that anyone who encounters the Brotherhood is never the same. Life has many moments of transformation–as an elderly Ethiopian woman once said to Leo Viktor Frobenius (1873 – 1938), the fabled scholar, when a woman is deflowered, or when a pubescent boy undergoes the ordeal of circumcision, each is changed forever–but when men and women encounter the Odin Brotherhood, they are transfigured.

Since publishing my little work on the Odin Brotherhood—in 1992—my contacts with the arcane have increased in number. I have been contacted by an alleged time traveller, I have been visited by a woman claiming to be from Odin, I have received cryptic verses (postmarked from Frankfurt, Germany) supposedly written by Odin himself, and I have been offered membership in a French suicide cult, I have been asked to help with an exorcism of an adolescent deaf girl, and I have been visited by a traumatized woman who claimed to be a refugee from a subterranean world where humans are “bred like cattle and hunted like rabbits.” The list is extensive.

My hope was to be invited to join the Academy of Secrets, founded by Giambattista Della Porta (1535? – 1615) and open only to those who had made important discoveries, but that has not yet happened.
Are any or all of these contacts connected to the Odin Brotherhood? As a believer in the process that Professor Karl Jung called “synchronicity,” or “meaningful coincidences,” I think that they are.
I cannot prove the linkage, but I do know that by publishing my slender book I did meet Jack Wolf. A Canadian, an acolyte of E. Max Hyatt, and an associate of Cassie Strong, a magician, Jack Wolf is the man who crafted the volume that you now hold.

And now, as my life has changed, so shall his.

After remaining hidden for so long, why is information on the Odin Brotherhood now emerging? Members still keep their involvement secret, but why is their “ancient lore” now appearing in books, articles, videos, and Internet sites?

Perhaps, as our civilization dies, we are being offered a “beacon of light.”

Many historians date the decline of the West from World War I, and is it a coincidence that weeks before the war, on July 20, 1914, that modern humans rediscovered Trois-Frères?

Used for 20,000 years as a religious site, this huge labyrinth, reached in total darkness via a narrow passage—only one foot high and 120 feet long—was dedicated to the old gods of Europe, when man hunted savage beasts, dressed in rawhide, and huddled around open fires.

Perhaps, in this time of distress, the old gods and goddesses from the era of the “Ice” are stirring once more.

And, they are using Jack Wolf to help us.

Mark Mirabello, PhD.
Year 591 of the Odin Brotherhood

Peter Stockinger

Posted on July 8, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Peter Stockinger has studied astrology in Austria and in Great Britain and has been practicing this art for about 25 years. He trained as a Cosmobiologist and modern astrologer in Vienna.

In 1998 he moved to North Wales and continued his astrological studies there. Studying the works of the English master astrologers of the Renaissance and the 17^th century closely, he soon realised that these were holding the key to a more precise form of astrology. He found that this approach was perfectly suitable to provide answers to 21^st century’s everyday life questions. Consequently he decided to concentrate purely on traditional natal and horary astrology and has also specialised in working with planetary gemstones. Peter is particularly interested in the history of astrology and its reintegration into the magical arts.

For the last 30 years Peter has also studied with several esoteric schools teaching a variety of disciplines; he has a particular interest in retrieving the ancient wisdom of our northern European ancestors.

In his mundane life he enjoys visiting the ancient sites of his home in North Wales and, together with his wife Anna, performs spiritual healing for rescued and traumatized animals.

Visit Peter Stockinger Traditional Astrology Website for consultations
starsandstones.wordpress.com

—————-

Sue Ward

Posted on July 8, 2013 by mogg mandrake

A student of astrology since the early 1980s, Sue very soon became fascinated by the western predictive tradition. Having been introduced to the work of William Lilly (1602-1681) through Zadkiel’s bastardized version of “Christian Astrology”, she has continued to focus on the original text.

Her work in Traditional astrology has been published in a wide variety of astrological magazines and journals, and she lectures nationally and internationally. Research into and study of William Lilly’s work remains her passion.

She undertakes client consultations and has taught the art through her correspondence courses for over twenty years.

Sue Ward Astrology Website
www.sue-ward.co.uk

————-

The Peacock’s Egg

Featured

Posted on June 27, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Ron Wyman

The Peacock’s Egg
Ron Wyman
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-34-3
£15.00+p&p / US $23.00+p&p
Subjects: Alchemy/Magic/Occult.

Click HERE for USA

Click HERE for UK

Special offer

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

The Peacock’s Egg & The Black Toad Click Here for the UK offer

The Peacock’s Egg & The Black Toad Click Here for the USA & Rest offer

The Peacock’s Egg describes a transformation of the psyche. This is based in the alchemy in which an alchemical dream process is set into motion, acquiring highly resolute manifestation through phases of the opus. An intensive and lengthy occult praxis is entered in which dreams and dreaming practices are developed. Advanced levels of occult experience are attained in which ethereal energy becomes mastered, involving a purification. These attainments adhere to beliefs regarding this type of paranormal experience that include the author’s interest in the work of Carlos Castaneda. The intricacies of a crucial alchemical image are described—a Vision of the Peacock’s Egg, an accessible metaphysical anatomy. The spatiality of the rose garden, the alchemical death, and attainment of the lapis are then brought into the practice.

Village Witch

Featured

Posted on May 7, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Life as a village wisewoman in the wilds of West Cornwall
Cassandra Latham-Jones

Village Witch
Life as a village Wisewoman in the wilds of West Cornwall
Cassandra Latham-Jones
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-23-7
£15.00 / US$24.00

Village Witch describes life as a Village Wisewoman in the wilds of West Cornwall. The first part of the book documents the tortuous and sometimes harrowing journey to achieve this unusual occupation. It is a tale that ultimately moves through surviving and into thriving. Cassandra’s past experiences directly inform her present practice and are intrinsic to being a wisewoman – she acquires wisdom from actively experiencing and observing the vagaries of life. As part of her work she travels around the country giving talks about her profession, and without exception is asked each time what brought her to become a village wisewoman. Many people want to hear about that journey and this is one of the reasons for deciding to write the book.

Following on from this, Cassandra tells of the practice of her craft, which includes many stories and observations regarding the day-to-day experiences of a traditional wisewoman including her personal approach to magic.

At present the market is flooded with ‘how-to-do’ books on witchcraft and associated themes. Almost without exception they inform in an authoritative way often including a cookbook of spells. There is far more to the Craft of the Wise than simply following someone else’s recipes for performing magic. It entails old-fashioned qualities such as hard work, discipline, dedication and commitment. This book differs in that it describes the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’ and in that sense challenges the reader to question and explore their own experiences of the worlds magical.

VILLAGE WISEWOMAN WEBSITE
www.villagewisewoman.co.uk/id6.html

CASSANDRA LATHAM-JONES BLOG
www.cassandralathamjones.wordpress.com

THE BOOKS OF THE BEAST

Posted on April 18, 2013 by mogg mandrake

The Book of the Beast

Old 1st Paperback edition

BUY IT NOW for only £5

The Books of The Beast
Timothy d’Arch Smith
Format: Softcover
ISBN 9781869928179
£12.99/US$22
Subjects: Aleister Crowley/Crowleyiana/Publishing History/Antiquarian Books/Occult.

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.

Magick Books

Posted on March 28, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Jennifer Layman

Protection for your Occult Books
Mandrake of Oxford boasts an impressive range of books about the occult, from texts about divination to works about magick. It is ideal for those who wish to pick up a title that would be difficult to find elsewhere. The occult is a topic that has fascinated mankind for centuries. Witchcraft, spells and the supernatural have been a source of interest since the dawn of humanity. As well as being interesting, these books can sometimes go up in value to the point where they sell for substantial sums of money, with books exchanging hands at auctions for up to twenty thousand pounds. Their value is not just financial though; many believe that books about the occult are powerful items that should be handled with care. A vast number of different traditions in which magic and witchcraft are important preach that the written word possesses a great amount of power and some hold the view that once owned by somebody, a spiritually charged book develops a connection to its owner. With that in mind, it is important to ensure that these books don’t fall into the wrong hands or get damaged or destroyed, as if you believe in their power then you won’t want to lose an item that you are connected to in this manner and if you merely see them as being fascinating to read then you won’t want to part with an essential item in your collection.

Remain Moisture, Dust and Insect Free
If you value your books then you can protect these prized possessions by keeping them in a dry environment away from dust and insects and purchasing contents insurance in case they are stolen or damaged through no fault or your own. People who collect occult books in the hope that they will one day go up in value should be aware of the fact that the condition of a book can make the difference between it being worth a small fortune and being worth next to nothing. However books do not need to be hundreds of years old in order to be worth considerably more than they were when they were written; some titles that were written within the last thirty years have more than tripled in value simply due to the fact that small numbers of them were produced and they are highly sought after.

Spiritual Cleansing
Those of you that believe that books contain spiritual as well as physical value will wish to care for the powers that are contained within them. If you have bought a book of spells then there are purification routines that should be adhered to when using items in rituals and books are no exception. These routines will vary dependent upon the tradition behind the spells, for example practitioners of Wicca believe in using certain herbs for cleansing purposes, whereas those who participate in ancient Egyptian practices have a series of complex rituals connected to cleansing. Many believe that failing to perform the correct cleansing routines can potentially lead to an item being contaminated with negative spiritual energy.

Binding Spell
If the book that you wish to protect is not a book of spells then you might wish to cast a binding spell on it in order to ensure that the power that is possessed within its pages is solely yours to harness. Place a candle, an incense stick, a rock and a cup containing water in a circle formation and sit behind it with the book in your hands. Free your mind of thought and try your hardest to spiritually connect with the book. Next extend the circle of objects so that you can fit within it and sit in it holding the book. Speak out loud the sentence, ‘You are bound to me. We now work as one’. Once you have completed these steps, the spell will be complete.

Pride of Place on your Bookshelf
Words are regarded as having special spiritual significance in a plethora of different traditions ranging from mainstream religions to ancient witchcraft. Perhaps this is for good reason. Whether you believe in the occult or just find it an interesting topic to research, taking the correct care of your books can ensure that they will be there for you to enjoy for years to come. It will mean that they can remain in a readable state and continue to take pride of place on your bookshelf.

Stephen Lambert & Paul Green

Posted on March 4, 2013 by mogg mandrake

psybikerb

The Psychic Biker meets The Extreme Ghost Hunter

Posted on March 4, 2013 by mogg mandrake

Paul Green & Stephen Lambert

The Psychic Biker meets The Extreme Ghost Hunter
Paul Green & Stephen Lambert
ISBN: 978-1-906958-20-6, 220pp US$24.00 / UK£15.00

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA & AUS