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Christian Mysticism & Gnosticism
Writing on the Ground by Wellesley Tudor Pole
£40.00
Published: Neville Spearman, London 1968
Condition: Good. Dust jacket is unclipped and in good condition apart from a small tear at the top near the spine. Binding is firm and pages are clean and unmarked. Condition could be described as fine or near fine apart from the slightly torn dust jacket.
"In "Writing on the Ground", Wellesley Tudor Pole continues where he left off in "A Man Seen Afar". In this book he challenges the everyday events of the life of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. He writes: "Surely it was the Christ speaking through Jesus who announced that 'I and the Father are one'? Jesus never indicated that his human birth differed from the natural one or that he, the man, though perfect in his humanity was the saviour of the world with power to destroy all sin and evil. Doubtless it was for the purpose of making converts that the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the idea that Jesus himself in human form was God incarnate, omnipotent and supreme arose". Penned in the final year of the author's life, he writes about The Archangelic Hierarchy, The Closing Days of Atlantis and his relationship with Abdu'l Baha Abbas, the son of Bahá'u'lláh the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. The author's whole philosophy is a gentle, insistent assertion that the life we know is only a minute part of a greater continuum existing far back and far ahead. Tudor Pole's ability to scan this continuum brings glimpses that are denied to most of us. "Every thought you think is pooled and passes into a reservoir which, being fed by each human mind becomes a latent or active influence for good-or the reverse""
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The Search for Truth by John Temple
£40.00
The Search for Truth is a unique investigation in twelve chapters of the occult secrets in the Bible, its Mystery Language, and their origin in the Wisdom Teachings of ancient Egypt. Throughout the book, occult writer and theologian John Temple discusses some of the mystery keys without which it is impossible to unlock the hidden meaning concealed within the many biblical stories, symbols and sacred teachings, some of which pre-date Christianity by many millenia.
Comes with a letterpress broadside with an original illustration by the artist Kateryna Zubakhina.
Hardback edition limited to 500 copies.
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.
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