John George Hohman's Pow Wows: An American Grimoire - Now Available!

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John George Hohman's "Pow Wows" is one of the best occult texts I've edited. Dating to the 1820s, it was spawned by the Pennsylvania Dutch folk traditions of the era, and may be variously seen as Americana, German-derived occultism, a grimoire, or a snake oil combination of herbal and prayer book.

Within this edition I retained the publishers' inclusions (which Hohman did not write) because they were present in the first edition, but removed the long and largely pointless running index, which for some odd reason was at the end of the work when it ought to have been included as a condensed table of contents.

The material covers herbal medicine, folk healing, prayers and invocations, a few magickal formulae, the construction of a couple of simplistic talismans (on paper) and protective spells, as well as hex breaking.

100 pages.

Several Work Updates

Update 1: Hohman's Pow-Wows is rapidly approaching completion. The work is going much faster than the Fortune Teller did because of the English being so much closer to that used in modern speech. I have not yet decided whether to include or omit the publishers' added section (which dates to the original work but is not entirely of German/Pennsylvanian origin.)

Update 2: I am going to expedite the Ars Goetia if it is within my capability to do so.

Update 3: I will be editing and releasing the "Ophiolatreia."

Update 4: Sickness in Hell will be taking rudimentary form over the course of August and I hope to release it before Halloween. If not, it will definitely be done before December.

Update 5: I still have to release the Trinosophia of St. Germaine, the Magus by Francis Barrett, and a dozen other works. Whether even working at full tilt I can complete them all before 2017 is not certain; the last slew of works I released quickly were all shorter in length and all were edited into English before modernity- the Trinosophia has to be translated from French as the Petit Albert was (Hall's translation is copyrighted and flawed) and The Magus is quite long and detailed. Two more apocryphal works, and at least three more alchemical texts, as well as the booklet I possess on Hypnotism and Mesmerism will join their ranks also, along with Faust's "Black Raven."

Hohman's Pow Wows (or; Long Lost Friend)

Now that the Universal Fortune Teller of Mrs. Bridget is complete, it's time for a new edited work; and thankfully this time it's in semi-modern English and comes from the United States.

Hohman's "Pow Wows" has nothing at all to do with Mesoamerican ritualism; which is funny given the connotations of the title- instead, it's a fusion system between German ritualism (influenced, as I will explain, by French ritualism) and Americana, a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition from the dawn of the 1800s.

The work itself is about the same length as, and contains some material similar to, the Petit Albert of 1700s era French renown- in my estimation the French cycle has influenced the content of this work, based on its eerie level of similarity- although it is within the realm of possibility that the similarities are due to traditions which were simply popular enough to have spread around Europe; after all, there's no certainty that all content in the Petit Albert originated in France (indeed, it mentions Hungary and other regions explicitly for a few of its passages.) It's broken into similar sections and covers similar maladies such as the bite of mad dogs (rabies of course) and headaches, hysteria, and other conditions.

One part herbal, one part prayer/incantation booklet, and one part folkish tradition, this rivals the Petit Albert for "most in depth ritual system" I have ever edited. It is likely that I will list this with the grimoires, since that is essentially what it is, even if it is also technically a work of folk magick.

I expect that it will be around 110 to 120 pages when completed, and it's quite a nice work.

The Universal Fortune Teller of Mrs. Bridget - Now Available!

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The 1790 Universal Fortune Teller is not attributed to Napoleon, although later works containing similar (and sometimes utterly plagiarized) content were. This text contains an elaborate backstory in which the editor claims to have obtained a manuscript from the thatched hut of an old wise woman who had recorded her occult findings in heiroglyphic form. Subsequent to cracking this mysterious code the work was then released.

It's fairly obvious that this backstory was an attempt to increase its circulation- but that doesn't detract from the work, which manages to cover astrology, palmistry, and other tricks, rites, and knowledge into just under 100 pages of content. The astrological system here goes well beyond the simple Zodiac and into terms and meanings as well as arcane minutiae.

With a slimmed down dream interpretation section and a buffed up card trick section, this work is comparable to Napoleon's Oraculum in style, minus, of course, the oracle itself. It is also a rather bawdy work, mentioning whoredom, vixens, cuckoldry, and adultery quite frequently in the divination-by-card section.

98 pages.