The only question more pertinent than whether you actually have any magic at your command, is whether you have a magical ethos?
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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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Let me take a moment to share a long-overdue book update. Let me cover both the writing I have been doing over the last years and the projects I aim to complete before the end of 2022. And if you don’t have time to read it all, I’ll make it really short.
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The qlippothic demon of the 11th pseudo-Sephira Da’ath (traditionally translated as Knowledge) is called Belial. One translation of this ancient name is The Worthless Ones. Thus, Belial represents the demonic force that turns knowledge to nothing, that evaporates meaning – or applied more personally, that denies someone value. Everything Belial touches becomes worthless, it turns into nothing.
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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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Paracelsus and Trithemius's relationship is likely to have been one of spiritual student and teacher – who both saw magic as a Promethean fire – and yet whose pathways into and expressions of it could not have been more different.
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Here are some reflections on the art and craft that is bookmaking. The occasion is a mini fine-edition of Goêtic Common Sense. There are only three copies and I am including images both from their final state as well as throughout their process of creation by a very well trained hand...
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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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Here is the second, slender volume in the series titled Büchlein Morgenstern. On less than twenty pages it offers an introduction to some of the essential thoughts on character-shaping and character-showing as concisely summarised by Henry Clay Trumbull in his 1889 book of the same title. As it might seem unusual to see his name appear in the context of practical magic, I am sharing my own short introduction and a personal note below.
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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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If we were to translate Paracelsus’s explanations on faith in the above quotes and elsewhere into a 21st-century position, we could give it as such: He defines the human capability of having faith in something as the ability to flow into one.
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[…] It takes Paracelsus less than two pages to establish a critical foundation for a Western type of shamanism almost entirely forgotten or overlooked today. In sparse words and with the precision of an adept in his field, he gives us the essential outline of the ecosystem of spirits within which the magus operates and orientates themselves.
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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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This week I have the very rare opportunity to share two new books with you. They grew and materialised in completely separate ways through my practical work and historic research over the last decade. (…) Let me tell you a bit about both books. Just enough so you know what to expect, and whether they are for you.
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Libraries are like gardens. Just like plants, books need to be looked after and cared for. They thrive on being seen. Our eyes, roaming over their backs on the shelves, offers them nutrition. And yet, only when we hold them in our hands, consult them, read them, then we allow them to grow. Books grow upon seeding their ideas into our minds. They prosper from merging their words with the substance of our thinking. They turn flesh, when we choose to act upon them.
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