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Categories:
Christian Mysticism & Gnosticism,
Magick & Occult,
Secret Societies
Dreams & Letters by Paul Sédir
£35.00
Paul Sédir (born Yvon Le Loup; 2 January 1871 – 3 February 1926) was a French author, professor, banker, and mystic noted for his extensive work on esotericism and Christian mysticism. A student of Gérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse, better known as Papus, founder of the Martinist Order, into which Sédir was initiated. Sédir’s first text, Les Miroirs Magiques (Magic Mirrors), was published in 1894 by Lucien Chamuel. This work, along with others like Les Tempéraments et la Culture psychique (1894), Les Incantations (1897), and La Médecine occulte (1900), reflects his profound knowledge in various domains of esotericism, including Kabbalah, astral light, and magical practices.
In this collection of two of Sédir’s works, Austin Avison introduces Paul Sédir, situating him in the exciting period of societal and cultural changes during the pre-war years in Europe. Avison then offers a translation of Sédir’s Dreams: Theories—Practice—Interpretation, a short discourse of how dreams function, their art, and a list of dream interpretations, and finally his translation of Magic Letters, which offers an insight into Sédir himself not only through his own prologue, but also in the collection of letters he curated for the collection. These two texts, along with Sédir’s other contributions, marked a significant chapter in the development of French esotericism in the early 20th century.
Contains black and white artwork by Michael Tsouras, an introduction by the translator, and two translated texts.
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IAO: Ophite Iconography by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal
£49.99
2024 paperback edition
IAO is an iconographic proposal, an attempt to illustrate the Gnostic worldview and its myths as understood by the Ophites, a sect of which little is known. It is, perhaps, an exercise of imagination, of what Christian iconography could have resembled if the Ophites had survived. Visually, it follows the sequences of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis and the Biblia Pauperum, reordering their contents according to this heterodox initiative.
“Gnosticism lacks images in a remarkable way, the abstraction of its texts is only equated by the visual silence of its few and discrete remains. And yet the texts are filled with images!
“These images are, in fact, visions, allegories, and myths of a yet unexplored richness. And the ambitious proposal here is to consolidate an iconographic programme…”
Central to this initiative is the reconstruction of the Ophite diagram described by Origen of Alexandria in Contra Celsum – a complex system in which their whole cosmic vision was integrated.
“The three axis, which the images will revolve around, are three distinctive topics of the gnostic worldview: The demiurge (and his relation to the manifested world), the myth of Sophia (and the female aspects of the divine), and the ophite Christology, or the saviour as a serpent.”
IAO rejects the commonly held notion of Gnosticism as a mere form of dualism within Christianity, and explores its relationship with other religions – if only by conceptual coincidence, following Edward Conze’s comparison between Buddhism and Gnosis.
Moreover, the Ophites, by declaring Christ to be an incarnation of the Serpent of Genesis, stood outside the moral spectrum of what is now understood as Christianity. Instead, notions of non-duality can be found in the doctrines of Basilides and the idea of the Pleroma, which are explored within, both conceptually and visually.
Semesilam: The Eternal Sun by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal
£69.99
In the new prologue to Semesilam, Sabogal offers personal insight into the diverse circumstances that played a role in producing this corpus, including the motifs, symbols, and ideas behind them, and further interpretations of various images and themes – Gnostic Symbolism, Angelic Iconography, and Symbols of the Unconscious among others – which have been crucial to his artistic process.
Within this myriad of symbology and meaning, the Sun is at the forefront, a recurring symbol and inspiration for the book’s title, Semesilam – here identified as an inscription often found on the so-called Abrasax Gnostic gemstones, pointing to the everlasting nature of the solar orb.
The material from Handbook of Sacred Anatomy constitutes a Mutus Liber that explores mystical interpretations of human remains, while A Second Nature was significantly inspired by Jungian analyses, delving also into the mysterious Akephalos, the headless figure – symbolically suggestive of both the dragon and contemplation of death – used by surrealist author Georges Bataille, who, in an uncompromising non-rational way, sought to create its own visual associative language.
A new preface by Frater Acher (author of the Holy Daimon trilogy [Scarlet Imprint, 2018; 2020; 2022], Clavis Goêtica [Hadean Press, 2021], and Ingenium [Tadehent Books, 2022]), and an epilogue by Gabriel McCaughry (founder and owner of Anathema Publishing Ltd., and author of (h)Aurorae, [Anathema Publishing, 2018] also illustrated by José), both give testimony to Sabogal’s long-standing personal, literary, and artistic relationships – the fruits of which have taken the form of several publications and have inspired the artwork compiled here.
Semesilam features a new and carefully designed layout by artist and typographer Joseph Uccello, which enhances the presentation of this collection, thereby making it available as a fine edition, showcasing material that has been otherwise out of print for a considerable while. Certainly, a worthy addition for those who are interested in José Gabriel’s body of work.
Selected Writings by Meister Eckhart
£10.99
Composed during a critical time in the evolution of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and the Christian faith. Writing with great rhetorical brilliance, Eckhart combines the neoplatonic concept of oneness - the idea that the ultimate principle of the universe is single and undivided - with his Christian belief in the Trinity, and considers the struggle to describe a perfect God through the imperfect medium of language.
Fusing philosophy and religion with vivid originality and metaphysical passion, these works have intrigued and inspired philosophers and theologians from Hegel to Heidegger and beyond.
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