NEW COLLECTIBLES: OUROBOROS, PETER J. CARROLL, GOLDEN DAWN TEMPLE DECK

EDGE OF THE CIRCLE BOOKS IS PLEASED TO PRESENT

THE FOLLOWING COLLECTIBLE TITLES 

AND DECK SETS

THE ESOTERICON

Being the Esotericon Book and The Portale of Chaos Card Deck

By Peter J. Carroll and Matt Kaybryn

Publisher: Arcanorium College, 2014

List Price: $62.95

Covering 212 pages and a spacious 270mm x 230mm format, this large, superbly produced hardbound book contains extensive text by Peter J Carroll and over 50 large full colour illustrations from Matt Kaybryn.

Carroll's text begins with a historical resume of magical and esoteric thought (where it came from and where it may go) before moving on to present the reader with three complete grimoires.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

The first grimoire of Elemental magic deals with modern practical magical techniques and the classical and modern interpretations of the traditional elemental symbolism.

The second grimoire of Planetary magic deals with the Pagan and Neo-Pagan magical archetypes or 'god-forms', their contemporary roles in the human condition, and how the magician can access them for their inspiration and to borrow their abilities.

The third grimoire of Stellar magic deals with the 'Elder Gods', those foci of awesome and dangerous extraterrestrial knowledge and power that await us in the vast deep reaches of the cosmos. This grimoire constitutes the latest upgrade to the ever evolving Necronomicon.

Complementing and supporting the grimoires, further chapters deal with the history of symbolism, the creation and/ or the evolution of gods and goddesses, and the physics of parapsychology and extraterrestrial communication. All in all this book contains enough to keep any wizard, magician, esotericist or natural philosopher entranced and busy for quite some time to come.

GOLDEN DAWN TEMPLE TAROT DECK

By Farrell and Wendrich

Wendrich artHouse, 2014

List Price: $64.95

Specifications: The set comprises of a boxed 80-card deck with accompanying booklet (Note that this booklet is not the handbook which accompanies the Meditation Set). Cards are sized 95mm x 135mm with curved corners. A silk finish minimizes glare and allows for ease of handling/shuffling. The deck is shrink-wrapped.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

Wendrich artHouse is proud to announce the publication of The Golden Dawn Temple Tarot, which has taken seven years to complete.

The Golden Dawn Temple Tarot is a modern deck resulting from the collaborative working of a triad. Occult author and Golden Dawn magician and researcher, Nick Farrell, worked alongside artist, adept and experienced meditator Harry Wendrich in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, before establishing the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea. His decades of experience and research of Golden Dawn ritual and symbolism illuminated the specifications laid out in Book “T” of the Golden Dawn manuscripts, upon which

this deck is based.

Harry and Nicola Wendrich used meditations specifically developed to engage and communicate with the archetypal forms and forces within the Tree of Life. They then pictorially translated and incorporated the material received to build upon the framework provided in the traditional documentation, which included revising and updating traditional colour assignments.

A unique feature of this deck is the vivid borders that connect each card with its placement on the Tree of Life glyph with a visionary updating of colour attributions to include the primary colour Magenta, which was unavailable as a non-fading pigment at the time the original Golden Dawn colour theory was recorded. The inclusion of Magenta in this deck brings an exciting, evolutionary step to the colour magic of the Tarot, and also brings an increased accuracy and vibrancy to the flashing colours used in both borders and images.

Thus the archetypal frequencies had their own input regarding the composition of the images, both from that which has been recorded and referred to since the earliest days of the Golden Dawn, to that which is communicated within our modern Temples. For the Golden Dawn is a living and vibrant tradition, developing and enlarging, as our consciousness expands, our visual capability increases, and modern technology enhances and facilitates the revelation of things perhaps known since the dawn of antiquity… perhaps even now just coming to light.

GOLDEN DAWN TEMPLE TAROT DECK: MEDITATION SET

by Nick Farrell and Harry Wendrich

Wendrich artHouse, 2014

List Price: $94.00

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

The Golden Dawn Temple Deck Meditation Set comprises a full set of A5 Major Arcana Keys from the Golden Dawn Temple Tarot Deck –23 cards in all, including the two versions of the Temperance Key – with a handbook by Nick Farrell and Harry Wendrich. This 100-page A5 handbook is exclusive to this Meditation Set and is not a component of the 80-card (green) deck; neither is it sold separately.

The handbook provides an introductory study of the attributions of the Major Arcana, including full descriptions of the traditional symbolism incorporated within each Key:

Number + Hebrew Name + Colours + Astrological Associations + Archetypal Symbolism + Specific Symbolism = the Key.

Preparatory exercises and a consecration ritual are followed by several tried and tested meditation techniques whereby you, the reader, can explore how the archetypal Tarot energies function in your life, their relationships to your natal astrological chart, with opportunities to balance energies, learn from past-life scenarios, and also investigate how archetypes function within couples and groups, finishing with a sequence to assist in understanding the process of one’s spiritual unfoldment.

The original paintings were purposely sized 70 cm x 100 cm – large enough to generate astral doorways to assist the artists in the creative act of capturing archetypal energies on canvas. The cards themselves are in A5 format (15cm x 22cm). The larger format of these bordered cards replicates the sense of entering a doorway into the inner realms and brings the reader a fuller impact of the magic within the images. As such the entire deck can be utilised as a set of meditation portals into the archetypal worlds of the Tarot. They are also suitable as Keys for Golden Dawn initiations, and for Major Arcana divinations.

Unlike the full deck of 80 cards with a back cover of racing green, the image on the back of the A5 Mediation Cards (left) depicts the Ankh and the Rose, incorporating the 22 Major Keys of the Major Arcana and their Titles, and the Four Elements of the Minor Arcana, symbolizing the Tree of Life before the Fall.

Please note that this special edition of the Major Arcana was published before the full deck of 80 cards, since when, a few alterations have been made in accordance with the insights gleaned throughout the progression of this project. The Judgement Key featured in this deck has the original Golden Dawn colour attribution of Glowing Scarlet-Orange. In the full Tarot deck, this Key has been updated according to the modernised colour theory which incorporates Magenta as the true primary for The Spirit of Fire. It is possible to meditate with either version of this Key: it would be of interest to note the differences that the colour makes to the meditation.

OCCULT PSALIGRAPHY

By Hagen von Tulien, Introduction by William Kiesel

Ouroboros Press, 2014

Specifications: Large format Quarto, 8 x 11 inches printed in Red and Black on 100 lb paperstock. Over 100 illustrations, many being full page papercuts. English and German text with introductions by the Artist and the Publisher.

Trade Edition:

888 High-grade black cotton Book-Cloth with blind-stamped device to front cover in black-foil stamped dust jacket.

List Price: $85.00

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

The Hidden Art of Papercutting

Ouroboros Press desires every discerning Bibliophile to know that a new book by contemporary artist and occultist Hagen Von Tulien is now available. With more than thirty years of intense magical theory and practice, he has specialized in creating art as an expression and manifestation of magical states of awareness and its use as an esoteric tool. In Occult Psaligraphy Von Tulien expresses these magical states in a series of over 100 papercuts. The book, produced in large format and printed in Red and Black will be presented in a Limited but distinct Edition. This bi-lingual text in English and German, includes introductions by the Artist and publisher William Kiesel, who speaks to the practice of papercutting in diverse esoteric traditions worldwide, including China, Japan, Mexico, Europe, Indonesia and America. Von Tulien’s papercuts show a superior quality, the line work, fluidity and design elements reflect experience with both graphics and occult symbolism. The papercut images Von Tulien creates with his scissors are functioning sacred diagrams, Veves and potent effigies whereby congress with the spirit world may be actuated.

Amalgamations of eyes, serpents, horns, skulls and other sigillic devices, these scissor-cuts become embodied vessels of power. They assist the practitioner in concentration, may be used in meditation or evocation, or as objects of talismanic effect. Specific God-forms, Iwa, and Avatars of Revelation are exemplified, honored and called forth. Other diagrammatic examples of Von Tulien’s scissor-cuts show initiatory knowledge and act as veritable trestleboards of ritual arcanum. The intricate lines and visually striking forms of his cuts cause an immediate fascination in the viewer – a fixation of vision, a keyhole through which Keys are received. Like the emblem books of the Renaissance the Occult Psaligraphy is rich in iconic symbolism. The devices of esoteric tradition are recondite and explicit and the entities present are no less corporeal to the eye.

About the Artist:

Throughout the 1990s Hagen was a key figure in the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros (I.O.T.), serving as its section head for Germany. He is currently a Master-Initiate of the Fraternitas Saturni (F.S.) and an empowered adept of the Société Voudon Gnostique (S.V.G.), focused on deeply researching the Saturnian and Voudon Gnosis. La Société Voudon Gnostique is a selective group of initiates and artists dedicated to manifesting the more powerful, inner revelations and transmissions of the Gods of Esoteric Voudon, as well as to push evolution and research of Voudon Gnosis and sorcery freely beyond all frontiers of orthodoxy. As a Gnostic Priest of the Ecclesia Gnostica Aeterna, Hagen von Tulien is dedicated to manifesting the supreme and divine Gnosis Aeterna within himself while assisting others on their own path to kosmic freedom and liberation. Hagen was a featured artist at the CLAVIS Journal volume 1 launch and the 5th annual Esoteric Book Conference.

ZOROASTER’S TELESCOPE

By André-Robert Andrea de Nerciat

Rendered from the German by Dr. Jennifer Zahrt, PhD

Ouroboros Press, 2014

Available in Trade Cloth Edition : Small octavo, full cloth over boards with gilt title and device. In a letterpress printed dust jacket. Illustrated with woodcuts, tables and a fold-out plate of THE URN.

Limited to 777 copies only $45.00

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S WEBPAGE:

Ouroboros Press is pleased to announce the first English translation of ZOROASTER’S TELESCOPE here rendered from the German by Dr. Jennifer Zahrt, PhD.

Introduction to Zoroaster’s Telescope

by John Leary

Zoroaster’s Telescope is a wonderfully strange book of oracle magic. Written in 1796 by André-Robert Andrea de Nerciat, a French author of Libertine genre, the text later appeared in a collection of German folk literature compiled by Johann Scheible from which this English translation was made. The 18th century was an active time for occultism; magicians and fortune tellers of note were spread throughout Europe, often playing significant roles in historical or political events. This was the era of the Count of St. Germain, Cagliostro, Antoine Court de Gebelin, Etteilla, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Emanuel Swedenborg and Adam Weishaupt whom were known for their visionary and magical prowess or accuracy at divining the future. It is a curious fact that the two genres of eroticism and the occult often overlap as is the case of the author of the present text, but this did not prevent him from giving advice on bodily desires of food and love as well as moralizing on the disadvantages of non-restraint.

Original table from the
German edition of Zoroaster’s
Telescope. 

While ancient divination systems such as geomancy and hepatoscopy have been around for centuries the 18th century was giving way to new forms of occult sciences such as the Odic Light and Magnetism of Baron Carl von Reichenbach and Franz Mesmer. Tarocco the Tarot game from Italy was also just coming into its own as a system of fortune telling with the publication of Le Monde Primitif Analyse et Compare avec le Monde Moderne by Antoine Court de Gebelin in 1781, and the publication of Maniere de se recreer avec le jeu de cartes nomees Tarots by Jean Francois Alliette in 1783. Etteilla produced his own Tarot cards not long after after this publication. Even though the present author André-Robert Andrea de Nerciat seemed to hold a rather dim view of activities such as Tarot and Palmistry as revealed twice in his text, he appears to have high regard for his particular amalgamation of divinatory of kabbala and spiritual astrology. Some of his statements appear as though they might be in direct contrast to actual Jewish thought such as the day starting with the first ray of light, making one ponder what the sources for some of his ideas might be.

This unusual fusion of religious and mystical ideas presented within a divination system are illustrated in the text by various woodcuts and instructive Tables. These woodcuts have their own charm, with their visual “beehive” theme but are necessary for understanding how the oracle works. These woodcuts have names like The Great Mirror, The Great Guide, and The Urn which call to mind a romantic notion of Kabbala and magic.

The Zoroaster’s Telescope claims to be The Key to the Great Divinatory Kabbala of the Magi, and indeed within the text we find an eclectic mix of Angel Magic, Astrology, Divination, twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon, Kabbala, Zoroastrianism, Sacred Geometry, Numerology, reminiscent of the syncretism MacGregor Mathers employed in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the close of the 19th century.

Zoroaster’s Telescope was rarely cited in the English speaking countries which probably slowed its inclusion into the mainstream esoteric resources in those countries. Ernst Lehner mistitled the plates in his book Symbols Signs & Signets calling them Zoroaster’s Oracle and the similarity of that name with William Wynn Westcott’s book often issued under the name Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster, caused some confusion. And while the book is an oracle and does have the name Zoroaster in the title the similarity ends there.

It has been been noted by Stuart Kaplan and others of the similarity of such diverse games as cards, chess, draughts, dice and dominoes, a sort of thick card if you will, and their possible common origins. It is here we can see a cross over to the draught like pieces in Zoroaster’s Telescope which are laid out in specific patterns, each hexagonal piece showing its notation of rank, degrees and astrological correspondences.

With these compositions, referred to in the text as mirrors, the Kabbalist reads and interprets through their placement in astrological houses and lunar mansions in order to see into the future. As we peer into Zoroaster’s Telescope and the Great Mirror we indeed find ourselves gazing directly into a looking glass and the ancient concept of know thyself. There is little doubt that the author saw these activities as a spiritual practice.

The book opens with an explanation of how the oracle is composed and how the operator is to be inspired comparing its composition to music. Then text reminds one of the type of instructions one might find in a grimoire when mentioning the names of the principal pieces, how they are to be constructed, and what they are to be made of. The similarities continue with the designation of spirits, intelligences, geniuses, hours of the day and night, mansions of the moon and their angelic correspondences as well as the meanings of various numbers, spheres, and planetary forces.

All this makes it apparent that Zoroaster’s Telescope is an oracle, and divinatory tool, for bringing the operator closer to the Divine. A medium or agency if you will, for receiving messages and revelation directly from God i.e. Special Providence. This is an unusual but precise method to obtain answers to inquiries, to access occult knowledge and insight of a practical nature. Here is an attempt at divine communication, to see into future circumstances using the divine or simply as a guide to making the navigation of life’s obstacles a little easier.

Ouroboros Press is one 

of the main organizers of the 

Esoteric Book Conference, 2014. 

http://esotericbookconference.com/