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Paganism
Wolfs-Head (paperback) by Shani Oates
£26.99
Óðinn’s identity as the Ecstatic God of the Tethers of Law and Death, is least recognised through his Skin-Turning and Shape-shifting techniques as gifts of the highest craft he imparts to a shamanic warrior elite. Those themes are explored in this volume, alighting upon a wide range of magics and histories identified within the Óðinnic cultus. Medieval source materials yield a wealth of information relating to Totemism; Ritual Guising; the Berserkir and Úlfhéðnar as Óðinn’s True Wolf Warriors; Motifs of Magical Beasts in Battle; the Wælceasega as Carrion Host; the Law and Covenants relating to Wǽr-loga; Outlawry; She-Wulves; The Red Thread of Wyrd, Warding and Binding the Dead, Varðlo(k)kur - the call to spirit; Dragons, the Wyrm, and finally, to the malefic sorcery of the Dog Heads of War, The Zmei, The Roggenwolf and the Bukka, whose presence in the wheat, rye and barley knots of the blessed harvest grains, all wend a path through to the real St George, to Green George.
Enchanted thread, girdles, withies and staves, seiðr and the völur are woven through the time-honoured mysteries shared by Beowulf, Grendel and his brimwylf (‘sea-wolf’) mother. Nordic culture drew inspiration and influence from the magical and martial disciplines of the Sámi, Slavic, north-European and Eurasian peoples. Invoking the divine ecstasy of creation, Shamen priests and warriors, stand ‘outside’ time. Óðinn’s antinomian challenges generated considerable friction within societal ‘law.’ The dehumanisation of the skóggarmaðr (wild men of the forest) outlawed for following his rule, rendered them indistinct from the forest-wolf’s status, and were perceived as equal quarry. Transpersonal experiences shaped their realities, relating to identification through a clan totem, namely the wolf, and later the dragon, wyrm and raven, not merely as wild beasts of battle, but of ancestry, mind, of wit and wisdom. Couched in ambiguities, the role of the Valkyrjur,’ the ‘handmaidens of Óðinn is re-evaluated, leading to a new conclusion for their association with (battle) carnage and the ‘Cult of the Dead.’
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A Druid in Psychologist’s Clothing by Ian C. Edwards
£65.00
Limited hardback edition.
Imagine a man who influenced the likes of Alan Watts, was a friend of Krishnamurti, whose work was lauded by Henry Miller, and had the audacity to challenge the great psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, during one of Jung’s own seminars. Also imagine that this very same man who authored thirteen books and countless articles on the relationship between psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy, spiritual practice, and Druidry was left out of the history books, and pushed to the margins of obscurity. Who was this man? This man was the early 20th-century British psychologist and Druid, E. Graham Howe.
Howe was a master psychologist but even more so a Druid, whom he described as being, “masters of the art of living.” He was a Druid in psychologist’s clothing, a psychologist who used psychology and psychotherapy to convey his secret Druidic doctrine. Like C.G. Jung’s Gnostically influenced Liber Novus (The Red Book), which was the secret foundation for all of his psychological writings, Howe’s Druidry was the secret foundation for his own writings. Howe’s Druidry had one primary aim, which was to heal psychological suffering. Whether he was referencing psychology, philosophy, or spirituality, Howe pointed to the art of healing in them all.
E. Graham Howe was one of the first psychologists to integrate spiritual practice with psychotherapy. Because he did so during a time when psychoanalysis was being established as a dogma, Howe was marginalized and even anathematized by the various psychoanalytic schools. This book will situate Howe within the history of psychoanalysis, showing his work in relation to Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, and Alfred Adler just to name a few. It will also provide a summary and reading of his metaphysical psychology, illustrating his views on depression, love, time, war, self-knowledge, psychotherapy as a way of being, and more. The book will also present some Druidic foundations of Howe’ psychology, in the spirit of the 18th – 19th century Welsh poet, Iolo Morganwg, whose own Druidry, like Howe’s, was inspired, emphasizing more of the Druidic soul rather than blind allegiance to any tradition or belief system.
Included in this book are forewords by author and Druid, John Michael Greer, and Jungian analyst and author, Stanton Marlan.
England on Fire by Stephen Ellcock & Mat Osman
£22.50 £25.00
This is a book about English art like no other. Forget the tired rogues' gallery of lords and ladies, forget the tall ships and haywains. These images cut to the heart of England's psychic landscapes to portray an Albion unhinged, where magic and rebellion and destruction are the horses to which the country is hitched.
On these fabled shores we are all castaways, whether our family has lived here for four thousand years or for four. Here you will find depictions of ancient trackways, chalk carvings and standing stones, of animal-masked community rituals, of streets set ablaze in protest, of occult dreams and psychedelic prophecies. There are over 200 images by artists ranging from William Blake, J.M.W.
Turner and Samuel Palmer to Paul Nash, Louis Wain, Bill Brandt, Derek Jarman and Ithell Colquhoun to present-day visionaries such as Paula Rego, Cathy de Monchaux, George Shaw, Jamie Reid, Matt Collishaw,Tacita Dean, Lina Iris Viktor, Yinka Shonibare, Nick Waplington, Dan Hillier, Nicola Tyson, Sutapa Biswas and Chila Kumari Burman. The mind-blowing selection of images is accompanied by short texts by Mat Osman, exploring magic and mazes, ghosts and gardens, shipwrecks and cities. These poetic renderings of a spectral isle, together with Stephen Ellcock's hallucinatory visual journey, reclaim Albion as an eternally inspiring and anarchic domain - an England on fire.
Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos by Peter Mark Adams
£65.99
Limited hardback edition
Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos: Spiritual Dissent in an Age of Tyranny is a study of the esoteric doctrines and spiritual traditions encoded within the Hagia Sophia, as manifested in its structural and decorative design.
The Hagia Sophia is one of the world’s most iconic buildings, but its origins in Late Antiquity conceal a sacred mystery preserved in the face of rising Christian tyranny. It is a building that encodes its spiritual agenda, in stone, resonance and light.
Peter Mark Adams has lived for thirty years in sight of the Hagia Sophia, and has turned his expertise to decoding the teachings expressed in the sacred architecture, materials, light and geometries of this remarkable and compelling edifice. He writes,
It is possessed of its own distinctive atmosphere, a frisson or feeling-tone at once sublime but at the same time, quite alien; and it was this, this indisputable phenomenologically attested sense of the extraordinary occluded beneath the accretions of its various identities, that bid me commence the present project; that of exploring its metaphysical origins.
Adams focusses on paring the building back to its original form, as it stood in the sixth century ce. Though now obscured by some 1500 years of appropriation, re-inscription and botched restorations, remarkably, much has been preserved, hidden in plain sight, and from that we can ascertain the metaphysical aims of its architects. Adams transports the reader into the spiritual and esoteric world of Hellenism in Late Antiquity; a world that suffered violent oppression, its metaphysical outlook and spiritual practices criminalised, its practitioners variously exiled, tortured or executed and its texts burned.
The spiritual origins of this tradition originated with Nestorius, the last legitimate Eleusinian Hierophant, and his son, Plutarch of Athens, a priest of Asclepius. Its executor, however, was none other than Plutarch’s daughter, Asclepigenia. Almost unknown today, she was arguably the last and greatest High Priestess of Antiquity, initiating and training some of the greatest intellects of the age – Syrianus, Hermias, Proclus, Ammonius and many others – who came to study within the newly created School of Athens. There they imbibed a performative theurgical spiritual tradition that was, in turn, conveyed to its various offshoots in Asia Minor and the great Hellenistic schools of Alexandria.
For almost a thousand years, Eleusis had been the greatest sanctuary within the ancient world, and its rites the most revered and archaic mysteries of the gods. With its sanctuary destroyed by monks in 395 ce and its rites prescribed by Imperial decree, the holders of the thousand year old initiatory lineage embarked upon a mission to preserve the essential core of its spiritual message.
Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos traces the unfolding of this project over the course of almost two centuries, culminating in the construction of the Hagia Sophia or ‘Holy Wisdom.’ Designed by initiates of the school of Alexandria it encapsulates the metaphysics of spiritual union as taught within the Eleusinian tradition – in defiance of Imperial religious decrees, persecution and oppression – to preserve a true, faithful and timeless narrative of spirituality. Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos interprets the clues left embedded within the building itself; and locates their source and hidden significance, travelling back across the ancient Hellenistic world from Asia Minor to Alexandria and Athens until we arrive at the gates of Eleusis itself.
Part I, The Golden Chain, establishes the metaphysical and spiritual lineage of the building’s designers; a journey that takes us to the school of Athens; a school specifically established to preserve the initiatory lineage of the mysteries of Eleusis. From Athens it traces the golden chain of initiatic succession to Alexandria, and from there to Tralles, Miletus and Aphrodisias in Asia Minor – the last great Ionian centres of Hellenism and rural paganism. Finally, it examines covert Hellenist, Procopius of Caesarea’s reactions to the building in the sixth century – shortly after the building had been completed.
Part II, Sacred Landscape/Sacred Architecture, explores the key tenets that govern the sacrality of landscapes and by extension, sacred structures.
Part III, The Immateriality of Stone, reads the visual language of the building itself, both structurally and decoratively; and decodes the clues left for us by its designers 1,500 years ago.
Part IV, The Return of the Golden Age of Kronos, concludes the quest by unveiling the hidden landscape of the soul encoded and occluded within the building’s structure. This work is, ultimately, about the recovery of a shared spiritual legacy of which the esoteric communities of today are direct spiritual descendants.
The text is supplemented by a glossary, and two appendices: Gamze Güzen’s Astrological Elective Reading for the Commencement of Construction of the Hagia Sophia in 532 ce; and Harper Feist’s The Design and Reflective properties of the Original Dome.
As with Peter Mark Adams’s previous works, this is an adept, rich and immersive book, illustrated with evocative and evidentiary images in colour and black & white.
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