As magicians we roam the forest of truths with the firm intention of never settling down. More than that, we create our path in this forest not searching for even more, even larger, or even more magnificent trees, but searching for those presences that move among them.
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Ideally, this week people would have received their preorders. Unfortunately, though, the cloth for the hardcover edition was damaged in transit, and now shipping is delayed to begin on Monday, November 17th. To shorten the waiting time a bit, Scarlet Imprint and I decided to offer a reading sample in advance. On this page, therefore, you can find the complete Introduction to Holy Heretics – in advance and for free.
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None of us can be Lucifer and Enoch at once. Their routes of travel are diametrically opposed: The former travelling from divinity into individuality, and the latter the reversed route. Unconstrained freedom and unconditional service are the two poles between which we are all meant to follow the narrow path of our life.
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[…] Such considerations turn this historic anecdote into a curious case of possibly authentic goêtic practice – in the sense of a lived reality of chthonic sorcery – that took place in the Southern Alps of the 17th century.
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The Egyptian Sorcerer is an Arabic parable taken from 11th to 13th-century sources. Expanded by a short introduction and some concluding thoughts, to this day this short text offers a veritable treasure trove of magical insights and living symbols.
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Let’s examine a largely unknown example of how the Olympic Spirits were pragmatically incorporated into the ever-evolving strands of folk magic. Specifically, we are taking a look at how the Olympic Spirits were leveraged as lares or household deities.
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This note is long overdue. The fact that it requires expression, seems to mark an important shortcoming in my recent books and social media posts. I hope to remedy some of it with this post, and more of it with future publications.
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The tools of authenticity lie embedded in the unimpressive quality of being able to call us back into the present moment with all of our (magical) senses. Standing wide awake, stretching out into all of our senses, while surrounded by the debris of the certainty we lost, counts among the most magical of all life skills.
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This essay is intended to be a torch thrown into the dark realms of Paracelsus’s genius. My naive hope is that someone might catch this torch and walk on with it. If, however, its flames will die down in full flight, my more realistic hope remains that it might hit some magicians and astrologers as a blunt club to the head. For that is what happens to me, each time I delve deep into Paracelsus’s writings: I see my mind cut, I bleed certainties, only to witness the morning star of new possibilities.
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This article is meant to help you decide in general whether the study of the solitary practitioner’s path in Western Magic is for you. And, more specifically, to illustrate some of the core skills you'd grow by enrolling in the distance learning course offered by the independent training institute IMBOLC.
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Here is a humble gift in a year in which we all deserve some good news: In honouring All Hallows 2020, the one night when even the Christian tradition remembers its goêtic roots and communes with the dead, Erzebet and I are sharing the Introduction of my upcoming book Clavis Goêtica (Hadean Preass, 2021).
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[…] Speaking of Rosicrucian Magic is a folly for many good reasons. It’s best to be avoided to be honest. Most people – scholars and practitioners alike – quickly came to substitute it with terms such as Theosophy, Pansophy, Astronomia Olympi more rarely, or simply adepta philosophia. So if we dare to use these two often romanticised and rarely understood terms here bound into one – Rosicrucian and Magic – it is for one reason alone. Because, if properly understood, nothing describes the essence of the work better than this simple term. The four arms of the cross span the world, they uphold its necessary tides and tensions; the rose is our work.
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I am currently busy writing a longer essay on an inofficial magus-degree ritual that emerged from the margins of the Order of the Gold- and Rosy Cross in the late 18th century. Central to this text, published in the spirit of the original Rosicrucians, is the motto ‘The True and the Good’ [Das Wahre und Gute].
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Each being, may it be angelic, human or otherwise, is defined by its encounter with the world. Without it, we are nothing but potential enshrined. The world is the divination bowl, filled with black waters, into which the gods stare, and see us.
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It is through the lens of the alleged Majorcan hermit Pelagius that we unlock the door - and gain access to Trithemius’ personal view and direct experiences of a magic filled with mystical integrity and angelic presence. Furthermore, we begin to see that without the writings of Trithemius-Pelagius - that is without the genuine impact of an imagined figure - our entire modern tradition of Western Magic would not be the same.
Read MoreFor centuries Western Magic has turned into the spiritual equivalent of the Crusades or the Spanish Reconquista: man’s feeble attempt to take back a realm they believed to be their birth right. Failing to realise that what lies behind such spiritual warfare is one’s own deep ignorance, the essential inability to understand and appreciate otherness. The ability - for some time at least - to walk through life, with both of one’s hands open.
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In the seventh volume on Alchymica we find the magical script- and seal-generator, that very well might have inspired the Golden Dawn’s evolution of drawing seals from their version of the Rosy-Cross. The following images are taken from this manuscript: They show several of the double pages of the text, including the secret script, and then the circular master-key at its end.
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As a practicing magician, writing about Christianity is not only a difficult, but possibly a rather dangerous undertaking. At least that is what I am learning. Currently I am exploring aspects of the mystical tradition of the Christian path from 190 CE to 1900 CE for a future book.
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One of them dove into the ocean of Oneness and said, 'I am Truth.' Another rode in a boat on the same ocean, and told of how far he was from the shore. One looks at the outside and talks of dry land, while gathering shells, and the other plunges into the ocean and gets the pearl.
Carl von Eckartshausen book ‘Prudence combined with Virtue’ from 1790 is a stark reminder of why turning into a wolf when living amongst wolves simply isn't good enough. Here we are exploring some of his key thoughts and provide an updated 2019 remix of the voluminous 400+ page tome.
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