Leadbeater offers an enlightened study of the Path of Discipleship under the Guidance of the Ascended Masters. While existing in our troubled world, we can see in this work the place of initiation and its role in both our spiritual and physical selves. Beautifully written in a manner to both guide and instruct, this classic book is of timeless value to all students of Initiation and Guided Wisdom. Includes a clickable Table of Contents.

    It is said that these teachings are records of private, intimate talks between a teacher and one or two of his disciples. The setting was in Egypt under the Roman Empire, among men who had received some instruction in Greek philosophy, and especially the Platonism of the period, but were not content with merely accepting and repeating the cut-and-dried dogmas of the orthodox philosophic schools and sought to build up, on a basis of Platonic doctrine, a philosophic religion that would better satisfy their needs. Included here are the libelli of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius, the Hermetic excerpts in the Anthologium of Stobaeus, and other fragments. The entire text is produced in the original Greek or Latin, with an English translation on facing pages. Volumes II, III, and IV of Hermetica, which contain Scott's notes on the work, his commentary, and testimonia, extensive addenda, and indices, are also published by Shambhala.

    A secret, fraternal order devoted to occult studies, the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, as it is sometimes called, may well be both older and more doctrinally complex than its Masonic counterpart. Officially beginning in Germany around 1614, Rosicrucianism may have been several centuries older. Waite discusses the precursors of the movement -- some with legitimate claims, others not -- dating as far back as the first century A.D. Kabalists, alchemists, and mystics, such as Jacob Boehme, and Raymond Lully, are featured in Waite's discussion of the development of Rosicrucian symbolism, and the evolution of its notions of the origins of life and the substance of the soul. The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to the rising and falling fortunes of the Brotherhood since its formal entry into the world after the appearance of several pamphlets, written by Christian Rosenkruez (psuedonym of Johan Andrea, and origin of the name of the order) in the early 17th century.