Remember the first rule of magick: if it works, use it; if it doesn’t, drop it. There’s no need to complicate your practice with a distracting level of concentration. There aren’t any shoulds in sex magick, just choices.
Brandy Williams, Ecstatic Ritual: Practical Sex Magick
The Best of the Equinox, Sex Magick: Volume III by Aleister Crowley, selected and introduced by Lon Milo DuQuette, from Weiser Books, is due for release on November 1, 2013. As they say in the email announcement, “Before there was ‘sex, drugs, and rock & roll’ there was Aleister Crowley.”
Through November 14th, if you order directly from Red Wheel / Weiser, they have a 30% discount code available, so use EQUI at checkout. There’s also an excerpt available in PDF format, if you want to get a gander at what it looks like.
“The Equinox, in print from 1909–1919, was a magical journal published by Aleister Crowley and included Crowley’s own A∴A∴ laws, rituals and rites, reviews, and magical works by other important practitioners. Published as ten volumes, much of the material remains out of print today. Now, for the first time since Israel Regardie’s selections Gems from the Equinox (1974) 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 III of the series presents perhaps the most titillating of esoteric subjects, Sex Magick. Once he grasped the fundamentals of sexual magick, Aleister Crowley understood it to be the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe. He dedicated the entire second half of his life to exploring its mysteries. This volume presents the bulk of Crowley’s written works on the subject and includes The Gnostic Mass, Energized Enthusiasm, Liber A’ash, Liber Chath, and Liber Stellae Rubeae.” [via]
The Brotherhood of Light and Darkness by Jason Augustus Newcomb, the 2007 hardcover from New Hermetics Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.
“Alexander Sebastian is an armchair occult enthusiast who lack much direction in life, but his world is turned upside down when his police detective brother-in=law asks him to help identify some magical symbols scrawled at a gruesome, ritualistic homicide. The crime is so horrific that it almost seems the killer might be some sort of demonic creature.
Alex quickly becomes obsessed with the crime, wondering who could be practicing black magick right in his hometown of Arlington, Massachusetts. He decides to find out and is quickly drawn into the underground modern magick scene. He encounters a cast array of odd characters—an obese, narcissistic, drug peddling adept, a beautiful, coke-snorting, sex magick dominatrix, an insanely jealous Freemason who pontificates with a lisp, and many others. But is one of them a killer? Or is one of them a demonic conjurer?
To find out more, Alex joins the A∴R∴T∴, an international magical fraternity with a sinister reputation, discovering that the murder victim was a member of this group. He soon begins to have unusually vivid and peculiar dreams, and terrifying encounters with what appears to be the world of the supernatural. He can’t tell whether these experiences are magical attacks from the killer, or just the product of his overactive imagination. As he tried to separate fact from fiction, and find out who is responsible for murder, Alex also discovers the beginning of his personal spiritual journey into the world of magical awakening.
This story is drawn largely from Newcomb’s own personal experiences over the past twenty years actively participating in the modern magical community. It comes out of his real life encounters with secret magical fraternities and the unique, eccentric people that populate this sub-cultuer. Fans of Harry Potter or the DaVinci Code will discover what the world of magick and secret societies really looks like when you’re personally involved. It reveals the world of the unknown as it truly exists, with an insider’s view of the real world of Witches, Wizards, Rosicrucians and magical creatures.”
The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.
Living Thelema by David Shoemaker is unexpectedly available already in softcover ahead of the planned Aug 25th, 2013 release date.
Living Thelema: A Practical Guide to Attainment in Aleister Crowley’s System of Magick by Dr David Shoemaker, of the Living Thelema podcast, the International College of Thelema, and a Hermetic Library anthology artist, is due for release in September as hardcover or special edition with leather binding by Ars Obscura, and in August in a variety of formats, is available for pre-order.
“The system of spiritual attainment developed by Aleister Crowley is notoriously challenging in its scope. Adapted from the popular podcast segment of the same name, Living Thelema brings a welcome approachability to Crowley’s material, without diminishing the depth of the system. The author focuses on the practical and experiential aspects of the path of Thelema, allowing the reader to grasp the true transformative power of the system.
Beginners and advanced practitioners alike will find much useful advice here, as Shoemaker brings his characteristic down-to-earth style to bear on topics such as ritual and meditation practices, sex magick, astral projection, psychotherapy for magicians, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and that pinnacle of attainment known as the crossing of the Abyss.
The author’s background as a practicing psychotherapist allows an entirely unique fusion of esoteric wisdom and cognitive science. Living Thelema is an invaluable handbook for any modern magician.”
“TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part One: Tools for the Journey
An Introduction to the Qabalah
The Holy Guardian Angel
The True Will
Getting Started with a Basic Magical Regimen
The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram
The Lesser & Greater Rituals of the Hexagram
Liber Resh vel Helios
Methods of Ritual Construction
Asana & Pranayama
Meditation & Visualization Practices
Astral Projection & Control of the Body of Light
Devotional Practices
Liber Samekh & the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel
Sexual Magick & Sexual MysticismPart Two: Perspectives on the Path of Attainment
The Methods & Tools of A∴A∴
Tarot & the Path of Initiation
Initiation & Tetragrammaton
The Chakras
The Role of the Ego in the Great Work
The Formulas of LVX and NOX
The Right Use of Magical Power
21st Century Alchemy
The Practical Use of Alchemical SymbolismPart Three: Life Outside the Temple
Patterns & Cycles in Magical Practice
Dreamwork
Relationships
Qabalistic Coping Techniques
Psychotherapy
The Anima & Animus
Cognitive Therapy for Magicians”
Living Thelema: A Practical Guide to Attainment in Aleister Crowley’s System of Magick by Dr David Shoemaker, of the Living Thelema podcast, the International College of Thelema, and a Hermetic Library anthology artist, is due for release in September as hardcover or special edition with leather binding by Ars Obscura, and in August in paperback and a variety of digital formats, is available for pre-order.
“The system of spiritual attainment developed by Aleister Crowley is notoriously challenging in its scope. Adapted from the popular podcast segment of the same name, Living Thelema brings a welcome approachability to Crowley’s material, without diminishing the depth of the system. The author focuses on the practical and experiential aspects of the path of Thelema, allowing the reader to grasp the true transformative power of the system.
Beginners and advanced practitioners alike will find much useful advice here, as Shoemaker brings his characteristic down-to-earth style to bear on topics such as ritual and meditation practices, sex magick, astral projection, psychotherapy for magicians, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and that pinnacle of attainment known as the crossing of the Abyss.
The author’s background as a practicing psychotherapist allows an entirely unique fusion of esoteric wisdom and cognitive science. Living Thelema is an invaluable handbook for any modern magician.”
You may be interested in The Moonchild of Yesod: A Grimoire of Occult Hyperchemistry, or Typhonian Sex Magick by Karl Stone which is to be published around Lughnasadh 2012 in a limited edition of 418. Turns out this is the first title from The Imaginary Book Co. which appears to be based in the UK, though they don’t mention that on the site.
At €81 that’s about US$ 100, so there’s quite a premium on this book which binding seems pretty standard for a hardcover and I’m not sure why the price is so dear. But, it’s being given quite a send up by the publisher.
“Very rarely does a genuinely original occult book appear: this work, The Moonchild of Yesod (subtitled ‘A Grimoire of Occult Hyperchemistry, or Typhonian Sex Magick’), is just such a book. With an extraordinary use of language, the author builds on the work of Mme. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, and Kenneth Grant to construct a Magickal Mirror that opens a genuine Gateway to Beyond.” [via]
And I’m not sure what to say about the cover blurb, except … no, I’ll just quote it without comment. You decide for yourself.
“Oracular gnosis, is the hypostatic precipitation of phantasma within the non-spatial stellar dimensions of the initiate. Traffick with praeter-human intelligences are received as a concussion of ‘shadow signatures’ which colour (Kalas) the magickal mirror experientially as a Somatonoësis.
Magickally, the crystallisation of this phantasma is a Lunar sexual operation. It occurs within the oneiric womb of Yesod, which receives the praeter-human spermatozoon via the lens of Daäth (The gateway to the ‘Outer Ones’). Within this siderialised amnion, the spectral tinctures undergo a form of hyper-chemistry, whereby the colours (Kalas) out of space arouse a convolvulus within the ‘Astral Light’, manifesting an antheridial embryonate, the Moonchild (Homunculus), which consolidates it’s prescience upon the substrate of the terrestrial sphere. The Moonchild is the vehicle of the Magickal Will i.e. making the word, flesh.
This grimoire is both a Theoretical and Practical exegesis of initiation, sexual magick, qabalah and sorcery. It elucidates the tangential and oblique method, whereby contact with the subtle occult forces are amplified from the deep soundless recesses of non-spatial stellar loci as a physicality (Somatonoësis). Such transmissions are approached indirectly and inferred by the magickal engine of the qabalah, whereby their gateways are represented as tauroid gestalts (Sephira) to the ‘Outer Ones’. Such traffick can be used for mystical or magickal operations depending upon how the practitioner utilises these subtle intrusions (Kalas) of phantasma inspissated within the alembic of the adepts occult anatomy as a Somatonoësis.” [via]
The Hermetic Library visual pool is a visual scavenger hunt for images of a living Western Esoteric Tradition.
Images of your ritual or ritual space, images of sigils or tools, showing off your own library or special volume from the restricted stacks, sacred spaces and places, esoteric artefacts and installations, inspired paintings and people – these and much more are part of the culture and practice of magick.
