[...] this book is an implicit argument for the rehabilitation of phenomenological experience as a legitimate category of architectural analysis. Adams’ account of the Hagia Sophia’s spatial and optical effects as deliberately engineered states of consciousness points towards a methodology for the study of sacred architecture that takes seriously both the intentionality of designers and the lived experience of those who move through the spaces they create.

I recommend both books wholeheartedly. They are among the most thought-provoking, poetic, and absorbing works I have had the pleasure of reading in recent years. And should you wish to read them side by side,  I can promise you a reading experience of rare richness.

Freemasonry in the Haitian Imaginary is an inspired and inspiring work. Its emphasis on the re-assertion of a people’s essential dignity and agency – that “enlightenment from below” arising from an esoterically-imbued ritual practice and its potential spillover into wider society – is surely one that is sorely needed in this day and age.

Ritual & Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mithras sits naturally alongside Adams’ earlier work as the masculine counterpart to Mystai […]. Together, the two books represent a sustained and serious attempt to recover the experiential core of ancient mystery practice, not as historical reconstruction for its own sake, but as a contribution to understanding the deeper roots of Western esoteric tradition.

[…] So that to experience them in their fullness, re-stored and re-furbished and stripped of historical accretions, is to immerse oneself in a holistic and systematic path of spiritual development with little if no unnecessary baggage. In other words, a literal pilgrimage. I cannot recommend Black Pilgrimage too highly; it is a defining and definitive text of modern esoteric thought and practice. 

[…] George’s engagement with the material is never merely academic. She identifies as an active herbalist and “potion maker” who views her spiritual path as a journey from “the dirt to the divine.” This unique work is to be commended in its presentation of a structured program of magical work based on two intersecting axes.

Few modern grimoires have carved their place into contemporary witchcraft quite like One. First issued in 2000 in a mere seventy-seven copies, Andrew Chumbley’s talismanic working on the East Anglian Toad Bone Rite has long hovered between legend and scarcity. With Xoanon’s new clothbound edition (777 hand-numbered copies), this seminal text is once again within reach.

[…] To those contemplating the purchase of these volumes I can say that they constitute a definitive contemporary articulation of the Luciferian tradition from both a theoretical and an operative perspective, and a defining work in the evolutionary unfolding of the Western esoteric tradition. As such they are modern classics.

[…] The key here is that the idiom of the Faceless God is precisely that: something which is not bound by literalism. That is, it is not enough to refer to the figure as mere metaphor but, as Vincente discusses, it appears to be a phenomenological experiential reality which the author traces throughout such manifestations as ram-headed Egyptian deity, Sabbatic Devil, Black Pharaoh, or Osirian cult as manifestation of the Hidden Sun.

Harper Feist’s Hekate Ochetos is an exceptional and exemplary text. It’s a rare privilege to be invited inside a practitioner’s most private moments; those that are encountered during the conduct of a theurgical retreat involving consecutive rites of invocation to, in this case, the goddess Hekate.

As an active practitioner who has experimented with the techniques described in Hadfield’s The Hours, I can think of few better means of effectively supercharging one’s sorcerous endeavors than implementing this near-forgotten system of magical timing.

The Way of the Eight Winds is the culmination of several decades of thought, practice, and spiritual cartography by one of Britain’s foremost geomancers and cunning men. The book is both a manual and a memoir, a synthesis of traditional European nature-based spirituality, elemental cosmology, folk geomancy, and symbolic magic, grounded in Pennick’s personal experience with rural and urban mysticism.

Frater Acher leads us through a series of exercises to allow us to realise that “human flesh” is far broader than we might at first think, and that in fact, the medium of magic is “spirit contact”. Then he makes the extremely valid point that while a human may be performing a ritual for a particular purpose “the eyes of the Others, however, are not fixated on the ostensible human message but on the establishment of a new channel in the ubiquitous medium.”

To my estimation, the ideas in this book are incredibly rich. In the colonial approach to the indigenous Americans and their native religiosity, these would repetitively be accused by their colonizers of being sodomites as well as idolaters, both concepts being still deeply linked in the Renaissance Christian mindset…

Card by card, Poncet meticulously takes us through the process by which he recovered the iconographic provenance of each card’s imagery based upon primary artistic materials, close observation of fine detail, and comparative historical and textual research. Poncet performs a virtuoso exercise in iconographic connoisseurship to create an evidential chain that convincingly explains the origins of the Tarot de Marseille tradition.

The powerful agitation this book achieves has been a primary revelation; the pain of recognition, then non-recognition is a firm strike of the disciplinarian’s rod to let these figures speak for themselves. The journey this book invites its readers to embark upon is certainly not of universal appeal. Yet, for those intrigued by the power of visual culture and willing enough to surrender to the taciturn spirits Lertas has conjured into these images, a profound pilgrimage awaits.

There are certain books regarded as “classics” of Western esotericism, like Agrippa’s works, the Lesser Keys of Solomon, Dee and Kelley’s journals, etc. I would wager High Magic is just about as important in terms of understanding the state of postmodern schools of magic(k)al thought as those books are for understanding the magic(k) of ages long past.

Sword of Song is a groundbreaking venture that still defies most categorizations. The temptation to parallel such an experiment with AC’s life is in some ways far too great to pass up on. (…) The book is a hybrid example of writing that entails much more than mere textuality may suggest. Hopefully Richard Kaczynski’s comprehensive edition will inspire revived and expansive interpretations of its contents for some time to come.

All The Doors fans should read this book and there’s a lot of value in it. The author, who is clearly a fine fellow, went through quite a journey to complete it, with a few impressive synchronicities that include a meeting outside the old Morrison family home, along the way. 

Betwixt God and the Devil writer, Richard Ward, is certainly bewitched by the narrative spell of the muse throughout this book, fashioning a wonderful arch that elucidates the history of magic and witchcraft in the English county of Essex. Indeed, as the subtitle suggests, the book’s contents delve recommendably deep into Essex folk magic from the sixteenth century to the present day.