Alchemy Rising: The White Book (Deluxe edition) by Heliophilus
Description
Collector’s edition, limited to 60 hand-numbered copies.
- All Collector’s copies are signed by the author.
- Trim size 246 × 189 mm.
- 256 pages.
- Handbound in full goatskin, hand-marbled by Freya Scott in a unique pattern eliciting the action of alchemical waters upon mineral and metallic matter.
- With a triangular white leather inlay on the front cover, symbolising elemental water, stamped with gold.
- The spine features a white leather title band, blocked in gold foil.
- Lavishly illustrated throughout with nearly 120 full colour photographs and five illustrations.
- Text set in Neacademia.
- Printed in full colour on Munken Print Cream 150 gsm paper.
- Featuring bespoke endpapers, head & tail band and silk ribbon.
- Presented with a letterpress bookmark and a letterpress broadside featuring a reproduction of “The Hand of the Philosophers,” found originally in Johann Isaac Hollandus’ 16th-century work of the same title.
The second and latest instalment to the Alchemy Rising series by the contemporary English alchemist Heliophilus is dedicated to the Art of Water and the mystery of the alchemical menstruums. Within its lavishly illustrated pages, Heliophilus takes us on an alchemical quest that follows the Sacred Fountain of the alchemists, through the great monarchical tributaries of Nature nurtured and nourished by the very streams and rivers that flow through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. From these kingdoms the alchemists drew their liquors, menstruums, spirits and lixiviums, and by doing so were able to calcine, precipitate, dissolve and sublime their subjects; reduce them to their first matter; and separate their philosophical principles.
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The Mystic Mandrake (Deluxe edition) by C.J.S. Thompson
£450.00
Artisanal Edition with Slipcase, limited to 15 copies only.
• Half-bound in Dark Green Venetian Goat Skin Leather.
• Momigami Mulberry Milano hand-made Marbled Endpapers.
• Gold foil blocking on rounded spine and slipcase.
• Coloured Headbands. Dark green cloth-covered slipcase.
• Printed on Munken Pure Cream 120gsm paper.
• Including 18 classic herbarium illustrations in color.
• Fine Typography and Layout
Few plants in the history of botany have inspired as much fascination, fear, and supernatural speculation as the mandrake. In The Mystic Mandrake, C. J. S. Thompson guides the reader through one of the most comprehensive interdisciplinary explorations of this enigmatic plant, at the crossroads of plant lore, medicine, folklore, and occult traditions.
From the earliest civilizations of the Near East to the botanical knowledge of ancient Greece and the folklore of medieval Europe, the mandrake remains one of the most emblematic and enduring witch plants. Revered as a love charm, root fetish, magical talisman, and the Devil’s ally, its human-shaped root and potent psychoactive properties gave rise to some of the most enduring legends in the history of natural magic. The belief that the plant screamed when uprooted, that it could confer fertility or wealth, or that it harboured a spirit within its roots reveals a deep relationship between nature, animistic belief and mythopoetic expressions of the natural world.
Drawing on ancient texts, medieval herbals, spiritual traditions, and early scientific observations, C. J. S. Thompson reconstructs more than three millennia of mandrake lore. At once scholarly and evocative, The Mystic Mandrake is an essential work for anyone interested in the practice of magic, the symbolic language of plants, and the enduring human quest to uncover the secret powers of nature.
The book is introduced with a foreword by Corinne Boyer, folk herbalist, teacher, and author of several books on plant lore and history.
Ecpyrosis: The Best of Starfire Volume One by Michael Staley (ed)
£120.00
Hardbound edition, published by Starfire in 2010. Bound in red cloth, with a design stamped to the front board (see image), it is slip-cased. It comes with decorated endpapers, a full colour illustrated dust-jacket, and with top and tail bands to the binding. Limited to 111 copies, signed by the editor and publisher, Michael Staley, This copy is dedicated to the previous owner, Stephen Pochin (Jerusalem Press). Ex-series.
Condition: Fine, unmarked copy.
Ecpyrosis is an alluring, informative and voluminous publication consisting of sixteen articles drawn from the first five issues of Starfire, together with the best of the artwork.The cover reproduced here to the left incorporates beautiful artwork by Kyle Fite. Also included are two new colour plates: a frontispiece consisting of detail from the cover artwork by Kyle Fite, and an endispiece of the covers of the constituent issues of Starfire. Printed on a substantial coated paper in order to take the heavy blacks in much of the artwork, Ecpyrosis is a heavyweight volume is every sense of the word.
Includes articles by Michael Staley, Andrew Chumbley, Gavin Semple and more.
The first issue of Starfire was published in 1986, and the fifth issue appeared in 1994. These years encompass Volume One, the constituent issues of which have long been out of print and appear but rarely on the second-hand market. This selection of articles and artwork from these first five issues is newly typeset, the articles have been lightly edited where necessary, and the artwork has wherever possible been freshly scanned and cleaned to give sharper and clearer reproduction. The result is an enthralling and substantial collection of articles and artwork that embody the best of Starfire.
The Focus of Life (Redux) by Austin Osman Spare
£150.00
Hardback limited to 700 copies only. Published by Fulgur in 2012.
Condition: Fine, unread and unmarked copy.
The Focus of Life: The Mutterings of Aãos, is arguably the most biographically significant of all Spare’s published works. Often obscure, magical and fragmentary, it invites exploration of a strange Nietzschean landscape through what Spare termed ‘the labyrinth of the alphabet.’ But the recent discovery of Spare’s original conceptual folio for the book, once owned by the respected writer E.M. Forster, has revealed an unseen series of powerful magico-erotic drawings – termed by Spare ‘blasphemous Ideographs’ – that provide an important key to understanding the ‘secret ritual of Self-Love’ that underlies this evocative and deeply personal work.
This new issue of The Focus of Life provides readers with a high quality facsimile of the 1921 first edition, together with a full colour facsimile of the newly discovered conceptual folio for the project. Drawings too explicit for publication in 1921 have thus been reunited with the magical narrative, providing new insight for those exploring the artist’s life and magical philosophy. These important works are further augmented with critical essays from Phil Baker and Robert Ansell.