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Magick & Occult
Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker
£19.55 £23.00
London has harbored many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956).
A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man."
But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river. Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions, and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality.
Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologized since his death. This groundbreaking biographical study offers wide-ranging insights into Spare's art, mind and world, reconnecting him with the art history that ignored him and exploring his parallel London; a bygone place of pub pianists, wealthy alchemists, and monstrous owls.
This richly readable and illuminating biography takes us deep into the strange inner world that this most enigmatic of artists inhabited, shedding new light while allowing just a few shadowy corners to flourish unspoiled.
Revised, updated, and with a new afterword by the author, this is the definitive edition of Phil Baker's critically lauded Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist.
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The Holy Books of the A.'.A.' by Aleister Crowley
£69.99
This is the first and only "red letter reference edition" of the Holy
Books of the Great White Brotherhood.
Features include:
Smyth-sewn and bound in soft Italian imitation leather;
Printed in black and red on heavy octavo Quran paper;
Rounded corners and red page edges on all sides;
A black double-sided satin ribbon marker;
Two-column format with a 10pt Roman typeface;
Cross-references between all "Class A" texts;
Brand-new critical apparatus to Libri CCXX and CDXVIII;
A legible reproduction of the holograph MS of Liber Legis;
No Egyptian portals, post-Crowley imprimaturs, or unclassified comments
to distract the reader.
Original Rider Waite Tarot Deck
£19.99
The Original Rider Waite Tarot is the most popular and widely used tarot card deck in the world. First issued in 1910, each card is rich in symbolism and striking in its design. Divided into the Major and Minor Arcanas, the cards were designed by Pamela Colman Smith in accordance with A.E. Waite's instructions. An instructional booklet is included, explaining the tarot card meanings and how to use the cards for divination, with an introduction by Stuart R. Kaplan.
The First Occult Tarot Book by Robert M. Place
£19.99
The First Occult Tarot as Envisioned by Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, comte de Mellet, in 1781
Before Aleister Crowley, before Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, before the Golden Dawn, before Papus, Éliphas Lévi, and Etteilla, the first author to describe an occult version of the Tarot was Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, comte de Mellet, writing in Antoine Court de Gébelin’s, 1781, eighth volume of his monumental encyclopedia, Monde primitif.
The comte de Mellet associated the Tarot’s trumps with the Classical Ages of Man: the Age of Gold, the Age of Silver, and the Age of Iron. He correlated the Trumps with the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, he described the minor suits in detail, and he provided the earliest discussion of a divination technique for the Tarot.
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