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After nearly 300 years, one of the most important alchemical and magical texts of all time has finally been translated into English! DuQuette In Goethe's immortal play, Faust, the brooding hero reflects upon the vainness of earthly knowledge and education. He opens a book of magic and is transfixed by an illustration of the magical universe. He resolves there and then to become a magician. The book that fired Goethe's imagination for that dramatic scene was a real book - the book of forbidden knowledge that evoked every mystical cliché - Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum. This first ever English edition of Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum will appeal to anyone interested in the history or practical aspects of alchemy, astrology, magick, Rosicrucianism, esoteric Freemasonry, and the Golden Dawn. A perfect addition to any library of classic esoteric literature, this edition reproduces famous illustrations.
Eirenaeus Philalethes was reputed to have performed miracles--restoring an aged lady's teeth and hair, bringing a withered peach tree to fruit--and was also rumored to possess a philosophers' stone. That he was merely a mythical creation didn't diminish his public reputation a whit. This is the story of the man behind the myth, George Starkey.
Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society/Vandenhoeck && Ruprecht The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (1691&–1768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penn&’s land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community &“Ephrata,&” after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata. In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephrata&’s manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrata&—its architecture, manuscript art, and social organization&—is the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.
This scholarly work traces the mysterious Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, from its inception upon the discovery of Father Christian Rosenkreuz's perfectly preserved body in a seven-sided vault to present-day organizations in America. McIntosh includes a survey of Rosicrucianism in America, exploring the latter day survivals of Bacon's New Atlantis. Perfect for students of the Western Mystery tradition who want an introduction to Rosicrucianism, with good resources for further study.
This new edition of Christopher McIntosh's classic book on the Golden and Rosy Cross order is eagerly awaited. The order stands out as one of the most fascinating and influential of the high-degree masonic and illuminist groups that mushroomed in Europe from the 18th century onward. Active mainly in the German-speaking lands, it recast the original Rosicrucian vision and gave it renewed vitality. At one point it became politically influential when the Prussian King, Frederick William II, was a member of the order. Historians have often perceived the Golden and Rosy Cross as having had a conservative, anti-Enlightenment agenda, but this study – drawing on rare German sources – shows that the matter was more complex. The members of the order practiced alchemy and operated a degree system that was later imitated by later orders such as the Golden Dawn. Like the latter, the Golden and Rosy Cross exerted a wide and enduring cultural influence. Both the alchemy of the order and its powerful ritual system are insightfully described in Christopher McIntosh's clear and compelling style.
This is the first systematic treatment of esotericism to appear in English. Here is also a historical survey, beginning with the Alexandrean Period, of the various esoteric currents such as Christian Kabbalah, Theosophy, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and Hermeticism. Common characteristics of these currents are the notion of universal interdependency and the experience of spiritual transformation. The author establishes a rigorous methodology; provides clarifying definitions of such key terms as gnosis, theosophy, occultism, and Hermeticism; and offers analysis of contemporary esotericism based on three distinct pathways. The second half of the book presents a series of studies on several important figures, works, and movements in Western esotericismstudies devoted to some of the most characteristic and illuminating aspects that this form of thought has taken, such as theosophical speculations on androgyny, rosicrucian literature, and Masonic symbolism. The book is completed by a rich and selective Bibliography conceived as a means of orientation and a tool for research.
This 1952 study analyses Goethe's writings in the light of his youthful readings in alchemy.
Unlike many books on painting that usually talk about art or painters, James Elkins’ compelling and original work focuses on alchemy, for like the alchemist, the painter seeks to transform and be transformed by the medium. In What Painting Is, James Elkins communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history. Alchemy provides a magical language to explore what it is a painter really does in her or his studio - the smells, the mess, the struggle to control the uncontrollable, the special knowledge only painters hold of how colours will mix, and how they will look. Written from the perspective of a painter-turned-art historian, What Painting Is is like nothing you have ever read about art.
"This book traces the continued existence of the spiritual alchemy of rebirth in heterodox and specifically Boehmist circles from around 1600 to the early twentieth century. The basic claim of continuity from Boehme to Atwood argued here is not new. A particularly apt expression may be found in F. Sherwood Taylor's The Alchemists of 1949, in which the founding editor of Ambix notes 'the existence of a school of mystical alchemists whose purpose was self-regeneration.' With Boehme as an important early exponent, this 'tendency culminated in 1850' with Atwood's Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery. Taylor's statement, it turns out, could hardly have been more accurate yet has so far lacked the support of a comprehensive presentation. This led Principe and Newman to describe such claims of continuity regarding spiritual alchemy as mere 'conjecture' without 'clear historical evidence.' This book marshals that hitherto elusive evidence, much of it found in obscure manuscript sources, and thus documents the continuity of spiritual alchemy that links the early-modern to the modern era"--