The Book of Forbidden Knowledge: Now Available!

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The Book of Forbidden Knowledge should in no way be judged based on its era and type of manufacture. A simple paperback released at the dawn of the 20th century, it's really more of a modern grimoire influenced by the Oracle/Napoleonic tradition than it is a hand guide of trickery typical of that late Victorian age.

Covering charms, talismans, fortune telling, prognostication, physiognomy, mesmerism, seances, and more, it's similar to Hohman's Pow Wows in the 1800s or the Petit Albert of the 1700s. That is to say, a compilation of many types of lore from multiple backgrounds; indeed the similarity it shares with these two works leads me to believe that it borrows some of its content from each. It's an extremely good work; far better than I expected when I first saw the cover and presumed it to be silly.

106 pages.

Upcoming Materials, and Blog Announcement

In the near future, Basil Valentines' "Twelve Keys" will be available- this alchemical work of note is quite good, and in keeping with the original edition I have omitted the attractive but largely superfluous illustrations present in latter printings. Add to this Philalethes' work, which is available here and things are moving along quite smoothly. I haven't forgotten about Sickness In Hell either- I guarantee I will begin the process of stringing together prior material in the near future.

In blog related news, it's update time; and by update I mean that I set up the basic format, color, font, and design of this blog in a single afternoon long ago. I've already replaced the primitive header text with a banner and added two new links which you may have noticed at the left hand side of the page; respectively, to my occult informational series on Youtube (covering everything from cryptids and UFOs to philosophy and sex magick) and my occult literature series in which I briefly summarize and explain the content of the literary works I am releasing here on this selfsame blog. My Youtube audience is far, far larger than my dedicated literary following right now and it makes sense to blend my two main online presences together to expand the reach of all my workings.

Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, Now Available!

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At long last the Aradia, Leland's most important work, is available from yours truly.

Unlike most of my releases, this one is almost more science and history than strict occultism- as an anthropological study (albeit one with some controversy behind it) it focuses on both the dogma and rituals of certain groups in Tuscany during this pre-modern period which practiced a sort of folkish witchcraft as part of what we might consider a pagan, Romanized religious cult.

Indeed, Leland claims it is this pagan group, and not christianity, that was dominant at the time; we may be seeing, in my opinion, here, Leland conflating a folkish tendency among the population with a wider religious force- this would make sense, since not long after this era both the Italians and Germans began openly adopting folkishness in an ubermensch sort of manner.

The rituals become less difficult to understand when compared to some of the other ritualism mentioned in grimoires from before this period- the permeability of the French and Italian cultures of this age would have allowed a great deal of knowledge to pass from the enormous corpus of French literature through the Italian cycle which itself was quite large.

It should be noted that while modern Wiccans credit this as a work describing their own movement it is far closer in form to genuine neopaganism in the European sense than to Wicca.