Author: Kenneth Grant
Publisher: Fulgur
ISBN: 9780953101603
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Nevill Drury
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199792511
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The Western magical traditions are currently undergoing an international resurgence. In Stealing Fire from Heaven, Nevill Drury offers an overview of the modern occult revival and seeks to explain this growing interest in ancient magical belief systems. Gnosticism and the Hermetica, the medieval Kabbalah, Tarot and Alchemy, and more recently, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, collectively laid the basis for the modern magical revival, which first began to gather momentum in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Western magic has since become increasingly eclectic, drawing on such diverse sources as classical Greco-Roman mythology, Celtic cosmology, Kundalini yoga and Tantra, shamanism, chaos theory, and the various spiritual traditions associated in many different cultures with the Universal Goddess. Drury traces the rise of various forms of magical belief and practice, from the influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to the emergence of Wicca and Goddess worship as expressions of contemporary feminine spirituality. He also explores Chaos Magick and the occult practices of the so-called Left-Hand Path, as well as twenty-first-century magical forays into cyberspace. He believes that the rise of modern Western magic stems essentially from the quest for personal spiritual transformation and direct experience of the sacred--a quest which the trance occultist and visionary artist Austin Osman Spare once referred to as "stealing fire from heaven." Considered in this light, Drury argues, modern Western magic can be regarded as a form of alternative spirituality in which the practitioners seek direct engagement with the mythic realm.

Author: Phil Baker
Publisher:
ISBN: 1583947167
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Austin Osman Spare is the definitive biography of the controversial occultist and artist, an enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world whose work was both hailed as genius and decried as immoral decadence. As George Bernard Shaw reportedly said, "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man." Trained as a draughtsman, Spare enjoyed early acclaim when, at the age of seventeen, his work was shown at the Royal Academy in London. But his star soon declined; Spare went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity. After a brief association with Aleister Crowley, he became absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions, while developing his own magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality. All the while, Spare continued to produce extraordinary art, and held his exhibitions outside of the conventional art world, in London pubs. Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologised since his death; the world's largest Spare collection is held by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Biographer Phil Baker separates fact from myth, providing wide-ranging insights into Spare's art and mind, reconnecting him with the art community that ignored him and exploring the rich tapestry of the culture that surrounded him, interweaving the birth of psychoanalysis, the historiography of the occult, and the British class system. This richly readable and illuminating biography, containing 50 black and white and 8 color photographs of Spare's art, takes us deep into the strange inner world of this enigmatic artist.

Author: Dave Evans
Publisher: Mandrake
ISBN: 9781869928728
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This volume is a multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed print publication, covering all areas of magic, witchcraft, paganism and all geographical regions and all historical periods.

Author: J. Den Boeft
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004123359
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This is a commentary on Book XXIV of the Res Gestae by the fourth century historian Ammianus Marcellinus. The commentary discusses philological, literary, linguistic and historical problems in the Latin text.

Author: Michael William West
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1644111640
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
• Explores the background and sexual magical beliefs of Paschal Beverly Randolph, Ida Craddock, Aleister Crowley, Maria de Naglowska, Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola, Franz Bardon, Jack Parsons, William S. Burroughs, Marjorie Cameron, Anton LaVey, and Genesis P-Orridge • Details the life of each sex magician, how they came to uncover their occult practice, and, most importantly, how the practice of sex magic affected their lives Offering a fascinating introduction to the occult practice of sex magic in the Western esoteric tradition, Michael William West explores its history from its reintroduction in the early 19th century via Paschal Beverly Randolph to the practices, influence, and figureheads of the 20th and 21st century such as Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, and Genesis P-Orridge, founder of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Focusing on 12 influential sex magicians, some well-known and some who have remained in obscurity, West details the life of each sex magician and how the practice of sex magic affected their lives. He explains how most of the figures presented in the book used sex magic as a means rather than an end, utilizing their practice to enhance and enrich their life’s work, whether in the arts, sciences, or as a spiritual leader. He examines what is known about Paschal Beverly Randolph, the founding father of modern sex magic, explores the tragic and mystical life of Ida Craddock, and discusses, in depth, iconic figures like Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, who saw sex magic as a source of artistic power and is now seen as a prophet of the chaos magick movement. Other sex magicians explored deployed magic to drive themselves to the highest echelons of achievement: in literature, William S. Burroughs; in music, Genesis P-Orridge; and in science, Jack Parsons, who openly used magic while making unconventional breakthroughs in rocket science. The author also examines Maria de Naglowska, Julius Evola, Franz Bardon, Marjorie Cameron, and Anton Szandor LaVey. While these sex magicians each followed a different spiritual path and had varying degrees of notoriety and infamy, one common thread emerges from looking at their interesting lives: utilizing magic to know thyself and change your reality is a journey that requires imagination, creativity, and self-awareness to the quest for enlightenment.

Author: Shai Feraro
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030155498
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book marks twenty years since the publication of Professor Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon, a major contribution to the historical study of Wicca. Building on and celebrating Hutton’s pioneering work, the chapters in this volume explore a range of modern magical, occult, and Pagan groups active in Western nations. Each contributor is a specialist in the study of modern Paganism and occultism, although differ in their embrace of historical, anthropological, and psychological perspectives. Chapters examine not only the history of Wicca, the largest and best-known form of modern Paganism, but also modern Pagan environmentalist and anti-nuclear activism, the Pagan interpretation of fairy folklore, and the contemporary ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ phenomenon.

Author: Phil Baker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1913689352
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A work that combines biography and pyschogeography to trace Aleister Crowley's life in London. "I dreamed I was paying a visit to London," Aleister Crowley wrote in Italy, continuing, "It was a vivid, long, coherent, detailed affair of several days, with so much incident that it would make a good-sized volume." Crowley had a love-hate relationship with London, but the city was where he spent much of his adult life, and it was the capital of the culture that created him: Crowley was a post-decadent with deviant Victorian roots in the cultural ferment of the 1890s and the magical revival of the Golden Dawn. Not a walking guide, although many routes could be pieced together from its pages, this is a biography by sites. A fusion of life-writing with psychogeography, steeped in London's social history from Victoria to the Blitz, it draws extensively on unpublished material and offers an exceptionally intimate picture of the Great Beast. We follow Crowley as he searches for prostitutes in Hyde Park and Pimlico, drinks absinthe and eats Chinese food in Soho, and find himself down on his luck in Paddington Green--and never quite losing sight of the illumination that drove him: "the abiding rapture," he wrote in his diary, "which makes a 'bus in the street sound like an angel choir!"

Author: Richard Kaczynski
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583945768
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 724

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Book Description
A rigorously researched biography of the founder of modern magick, as well as a study of the occult, sexuality, Eastern religion, and more The name “Aleister Crowley” instantly conjures visions of diabolic ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences—and while the sardonic Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was also much more than “the Beast,” as this authoritative biography shows. Perdurabo—entitled after the magical name Crowley chose when inducted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—traces Crowley’s remarkable journey from his birth as the only son of a wealthy lay preacher to his death in a boarding house as the world’s foremost authority on magick. Along the way, he rebels against his conservative religious upbringing; befriends famous artists, writers, and philosophers (and becomes a poet himself); is attacked for his practice of “the black arts”; and teaches that science and magick can work together. While seeking to spread his infamous philosophy of, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” Crowley becomes one of the most notorious figures of his day. Based on Richard Kaczynski’s twenty years of research, and including previously unpublished biographical details, Perdurabo paints a memorable portrait of the man who inspired the counterculture and influenced generations of artists, punks, wiccans, and other denizens of the demimonde.

Author: Richard Metzger
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
ISBN: 1934708348
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
First published in 2003, Book of Lies was hailed as a 21st century grimoire and instantly became a cult classic. Now reformatted for the next generation of magicians and all counterculture devotees, it gathers an unprecedented cabal of occultists, esoteric scholars,and forward thinkers, all curated by Disinformation’s former "wicked warlock" Richard Metzger. This compendium of the occult includes entries on topics as diverse and dangerous as Aleister Crowley, secret societies, psychedelics, and magick in theory and practice. The result is an alchemical formula that may well rip a hole in the fabric of your reality: Mark Pesce, author of The Playful World, compares computer programming and spellcasting. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, father of Industrial Music and Rave culture explains how samples in a rave song can have magical consequences. William Burroughs and the occult. Nevill Drury, Australia's most noted occult writer, tells of Dion Fortune, Austin Spare, and Rosaleen Norton. Donald Tyson's "The Enochian Apocalypse Working" ask if the seeds of the end of the world sown in the Elizabethan era. A biographical essay on Marjorie Cameron, the fascinating character from Los Angeles' occult and beatnik scene. Hitler and the occult--Peter Levenda interview by Tracy Twyman. Robert Temple on how his book The Sirius Mystery's, controversial thesis (for which he was ridiculed) was proven by the Hubble telescope twenty-five years late. An exclusive Anton LaVey interview by Michael Moynihan, author of best-selling book Lords of Chaos. Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, looks at H. P. Lovecraft's Magick Realism Robert Anton Wilson on Timothy Leary and Aleister Crowley Comics genius Grant Morrison offers Magic for the people. It’s all here and more!