First Edition Hardcover. Large quarto (9 x 12 inches). Cloth with gilt stamping. viii + 322 pages. Over 250 b&w illustrations. Appendices and index. First Edition limited to 777 copies. A comprehensive and detailed study of the world of late nineteenth century esotericism and fringe-masonry, that begat the Ordo Templi Orientis.

    The Kabbalah, Magick, and Thelema is the second volume of writings by Phyllis Seckler to be published by the College of Thelema of Northern California in association with The Teitan Press. Like the first volume, this collection is edited and introduced by three of Seckler's former students: Rorac Johnson, Gregory Peters, and David Shoemaker, but this second volume additionally includes a short Foreword by one of her best-known early A∴A∴ students, Lon Milo DuQuette. In common with Crowley, Seckler found short, pithy essays, written in the form of "letters," to be an excellent and powerful teaching method, and the main body of this work comprises a series of these letters, covering diverse topics from kabbalah and the practice of ritual magic, through philosophy and spiritual enquiry to commentary on the Thelemic culture of the time. Originally published in Seckler's journal "In the Continuum," they are here presented for the first time in book form, accompanied by redrawn and corrected diagrams. The book also reproduces a number of important letters that passed between Seckler and other significant figures in the history of post-Crowleyan Thelema, including Karl Germer, Israel Regardie, Grady McMurtry, Gerald Yorke, and Marcelo Motta. These letters, which cover matters as varied as the leadership succession of the O.T.O. and the thefts at Karl Germer's library, are published here for the first time, as are a number of related photographs.New Book. Fine in Fine dust jacket. (Item ID: 41745)

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was a study in contradictions. Born into a fundamentalist Christian family and educated at Cambridge, he was vilified as a traitor, drug addict, anddebaucher, yet revered as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. Moving beyond the influence of contemporary psychology and the modernist understanding of the occult, Crowley declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was an eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawn from Western European magical ceremonies and Indic sources for meditation and yoga. This journey of self-liberation culminated in harnessing sexual power as a magical discipline, a sacrilization of the self as practiced in Crowley's mixedmasonic group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom. Aleister Crowley's lasting influence can be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and in many forms ofalternative spirituality and popular culture. The essays in this volume offer crucial insight into Crowley's foundational role in the study of Western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.

    Originally published as ten volumes, much of the material remains out of print today. Now, for the first time since Israel Regardie's 1974 release of Gems from the Equinox , renowned scholar and U.S. Deputy Grandmaster General of the O.T.O. Lon Milo DuQuette presents readers with his own selections from this classic publication, The Best of The Equinox.Volume I presents readers with the Enochian magic selections from The Equinox and contains Crowley's practical distillation of the work of Elizabethan magi John Dee and Edward Kelley—perhaps the most powerful and elegant of all magical systems. Dee and Kelley's work is one of the most popular magical techniques seized upon by modern magicians.

    It is in line with the motto of Scientific Illuminism, "The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion." Naturalistic Occultism approaches the theory and practice of occultism in a way that is scientific (using the scientific method and being up-to-date in current scientific knowledge), naturalistic (not supernatural), and pragmatic (whatever works is provisionally 'true'). This book represents an honest attempt to separate the gold of the practice of magick from the dross of superstition and dogma.

    David was passionately interested in the work of Gurdjieff as well as that of Crowley, and in the early to mid 1970s he wrote this penetrating study comparing the work of both men. Unfortunately it failed to find a publisher at the time, although publication was referenced as forthcoming in Kenneth Grant’s Nightside of Eden. (Muller, 1977)Crowley took an interest in the work of the Greek-Armenian occultist G.I. Gurdjieff, and visited Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau in 1924 and 1926. There have been other comparative studies of the work of the two men, the most recent being The Three Dangerous Magi by P.T. Mistlberger (O Books, 2010).Examining in turn the life and work of the two men at various levels, the author discerns a common source. Commenting circa 1919 on the first chapter of The Book of the Law, Crowley wrote “Aiwaz is not as I had supposed a mere formula, like many angelic names, but is the true most ancient name of the God of the Yezidis, and thus returns to the highest Antiquity. Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition”. Similarly, the author here shows that the roots of Gurdjieff's work can be traced to the same source.With a full-colour wrap-around dustjacket, a substantial Foreword by Alistair Coombs, plates, tables and line-drawings throughout the text, a Bibliography, a comprehensive Index, and an Afterword about the author, this book will be of considerable interest to many.