EDGE OF THE CIRCLE
IS PLEASED TO PRESENT
THE FOLLOWING NEW TITLES
FROM HELL FIRE CLUB BOOKS:
ALEX SANDERS NOTEBOOK:
Edited by Eamonn Loughran
Two Book Set in Slipcase. Limited to only 88 copies.
Full colour 273 page facsimile in full dark green sheepskin leather with marbled endpapers,
Gold Titles and Cover Embossed with a design of witches Athames taken from a page of the original notebook.
Publisher: Hell Fire Club Books
List Price of copies in Stock: $214.95
*NOTE from ROBERT: “If I ever get this title again, the price will go up. Probably to around $256.00”
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
“Brightness of brightness,
Sky of our mortality
Home of our hopes,
Height of our fear,
Send us a sign,
A sign of benevolence,
Show forth our Government
Answer our song!”
Born in 1926 and coming from a poor working-class family in the North of England, Alex Sanders was exposed to the folk magic of his grandmother Mary Bibby and the Spiritualism of his mother Margaret from an early age. Alex Sanders practised healing and country magic in his early years, working in an industrial chemists laboratory, during this period he discovered the Sacred magic of Abramelin edition issued by S.L.MacGregor Mathers and also the writings of Aleister Crowley. Soon after the Second World War Alex Sanders found employment in the John Rylands Library in Manchester where he discovered a 19th century copy of the ‘Key of Solomon’ and the writings of Eliphas Levi.
A flambouyant and creative magical partnership with the beautiful Maxine Sanders secured both fame and a steady stream of disciples, Alex and Maxine lived for a time in London at Clanricarde Gardens where they both enjoyed (and endured) the attentions of the national media.
Alex’s personal generosity was legendary and came from his entire lack of concern for the material possessions with which so many are enamoured, he was a true magician: manipulating the forms and forces of this world but remaining unattached.
In spite of this he was a remarkably able material medium, capable of conjuring spirits as well as treasure!
In 1971 Alex Sanders moved to Sussex to continue his magical workings with the contacts of his ‘Ordine Della Luna’, its Inner Order of Deucalion and later in the 1980s with an Aztec spirit guide.
Under Maxine’s direction and with her express permission we reproduce the pages of the entire notebook, complete with her personal introduction.
The notebook contains material reflecting the hereditary witchcraft traditions of Northern England, the rituals and practices of both Gardnerian Wicca and later Alexandrian Witchcraft, as well as the teachings of Aleister Crowleys sexual magick, the ‘Key of Solomon’ and instructions for ritual and spiritual practices culled from surviving lineages of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
In Alex’s hand, the notebook is a remarkable fusion of traditional hereditary witchcraft lore and the high magical teachings with which his personal work was so clearly identified..
He alone provides a veritable link between the folk magic practices of the cunning-men of previous centuries and the advanced spiritual practices of Abramelin and the Magick of Aleister Crowley.
The first page is a traditional Lancashire witches charm with magic symbols
The pages were originally torn by Alex to dispose of them but were salvaged by a disciple, taped together and sewn into a single binding; this was subsequently kept safely hidden by Maxine Sanders in an embroidered linen bag and remains in her personal collection to this day.
During his lifetime Alex Sanders was the most visible and influential figure both in the revival of traditional witchcraft as well as the teaching of advanced occultism in the world. After his death he remains not only one of the most enigmatic figures of the twentieth century (having left few traces of published literature behind him) but also perhaps the most prolific of all practical occultists.
Alex Sanders is considered by many to have been one of the most extraordinarily innovative and talented occultists of the twentieth century. Founder and initiate of a number of esoteric orders, practitioner of shamanic style spirit workings, witch, magician, psychic, all these aspects of Alex Sanders character have been well documented.
The pages of which the notebook it is composed were kept by Alex Sanders over a number of years probably up until the late 1960’s, indeed from an inspection of the sewing and the pagination, the original appears to be two distinct notebooks conjoined.
**
KEYS TO THE HOODOO KINGDOM:
A Work Of Leaping Into The Spirit World
by Sean Woodward, Introduced by Mgr. Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold
Including original artwork from work inspired and directed by Michael P. Bertiaux
Publisher: Hell Fire Club Books
This edition is limited to 250 in root-textured cloth
Limited to 250 copies
List Price: $87.95
- TAU ZENDIQ
- 33°, 97°, XVI°
- GRAND MASTER
- Great Britain & Ireland
- Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua and La Couleuvre Noire
- BISHOP
- Ecclesia Gnostica Spiritualis
- NATIONAL HIEROPHANT
- Rite Ancien et Primitif de Memphis-Misraim
- Including his original artwork from work inspired and directed by Michael P. Bertiaux
- Introduced by Mgr. Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold
- Grand Master for Brazil
- Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua + La Couleuvre Noir
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
The work of Michael Bertiaux stands out as unique in the modern occult world due to its postmodern stance and Spiritist nerve that introduced to the world a magic of being rooted in ontology and phenomenology being brought into domains of radical magic where the practitioner gradually realizes that he is the artist and the world is his canvas as every tube of paint and every flask of dissolvent and every brushstroke is rooted in a possibility attached to the lattices and matrixes of creation, a 64 sided diamond that pulsates in the rhythm of death and becoming at each nanosecond the world comes into being as a renewed constant possibility, where we define the magician as artist in the meeting with what is not as well as what does affirm, and drives us towards realization, knowledge and the irrational at the same time.
I recall my own fascination and frustration with ‘The Voudon Gnostic Workbook’ when I came across it quite by chance in a bookstore in Oslo in 1991: it was a chaotic oeuvre and in the many pages certain chapter and lessons stood out as talking more clearly than others, a resonance with the parts of Bertiaux work that established rapport and generated a peculiar order in the apparent chaos.
It took time to realize where Bertiaux came from and the realization that he had simply presented a book of possibilities, a series of experiments, a tome of research, a ‘cookbook’ as he defined it himself when we meet in the late 90s generated the eureka necessary to realize the importance of Heidegger and the entire French tradition, not only in terms of Spiritism and occultism, but also the very philosophical frame of mind that would signify the French philosophical tradition. This means that Bertiaux was also presenting his work as an example of how the magician-artist can create his and her world, as the Voltiguer or leaper in the realities real and imagined, because as the creator of one’s reality and being, Zothyria and Krypton would as a possibility be as real and meaningful as any physical and material place because all that is, was once a dream, a flickering in the cosmic imagination. This means that the way towards explaining what the work represented by OTOA and LCN is about is to show by example, to show the 729 shades of the magician-artist as creator of his own magical reality.
In ‘Keys to the Hoodoo Kingdom’ Monseigneur Woodward is doing exactly that, he is placing himself in the center of his own magical universe and is sharing with the reader the consequences of his voltiguerism and Spiritism as lodged in the lessons known as Lucky Hoodoo, a work that in its simplicity is also a work of tremendous impact and functionality. Also, in this book Sean is taking time to reflect on the various influences present in the creation of OTOA and LCN and as the book opens chapter by chapter an understanding of the ‘two Yggdrasils’, that were essential to Jean Maine, the commonalities between the Vodoun world view and the Nordic World view opens up in greater clarity and harmony as it fleshes itself out in the red and the black serpent of the solar Hoodoo temple in its ability to open the landscapes of possibilities and do, as the magical imagination should do, stimulate the creative potential of the magician-artist.
Sean is actually dedicating chapters to several key lessons in Bertiaux’s ‘The Voudon Gnostic Workbook’ and in this is giving them a context within the context and demonstrating the impact it had on his Being – and in this by Sean’s example and willingness to share, he is also generating solidity and temporarily of his being and ‘not-being’ into a particular and unique Sean-ness. This means that Sean is giving us a practical demonstration of what OTOA (Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua) and LCN (La Coulevre Noir) is. By presenting this work from the perspective of a peculiar being in the world that generates new worlds and new connections by the will and magical imagination, painting the world from a given place in time and space, an angel of unique birth that will ever gestate new and different possibilities as yet another jump in the worlds of magical possibilities are made by standing still in the eternal dream…
CONTENTS
Introduction by Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold
The Hoodoo Kingdom
The Sorcerer as a Young Boy
The Avalon Working
Thoth the Atlantean
The Temple of the Loa
The Seventh Letter is G
The Cabinet of Currencies
Good UFOs, Bad UFOs
Nocturnal
Vampyre-Gnosis
La Prise-des-Yeaux
Spider Sorcerers of London
Voudon Witchcraft in the Balkans
At the Monastery Door
The Cult of Choronzon
The Rite of the Red Temple
Marassa-Physics
Bon-Po and the Black Snake
When Papa Leghba is Upon Me
The Tour-de-ZAL
Blood Sex Body Magick
The Monastery
Apprentice and Master
The Qubes of Kalfou
Navigating the Dreamscape
Gnostic Oracles
Transyuggothian Tremors
Children of the Winter Solstice
Pilgrimage to Zothyria
The Cult of the Deep Ones
You’re a Lucky Hoodoo
ILLUSTRATIONS
Transyuggothian Stele of the Black Pharaoh
Cosmic Leghba
Transyuggothian Transmission Station #7
The Master of Zothyria
Hoodoo N-Physics
Hierophant of the Deep Ones
Consecration Certificate of Tau Sean Woodward
Angels of the Basilica
97° of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim
EQ Universe-B
Abbé of Other Worlds
Hoodoo
Ghuedhe Gnosis
Les Clés de Carrefour
Holy Mother of LAMs
**
...To all aspirants for the first time… A rare glimpse into the most notorious of secret societies – from the inside, by Eamonn Loughran, edited by Shaun Johnson
SECRET SYMBOLS of THE HELL FIRE CLUB:
or The Mystic Society of Thelema
Considered from an occult perspective
by Eamonn Loughran, Edited by Shaun Johnson
This edition is limited to 500 copies hardbound, cloth-bound , hand numbered.
Each incorporates 258 pages and over 140 colour and black and white illustrations with many being seen here for the first time.
List Price; $90.95
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Here you will find first-hand information on the structure and meetings of the Hell Fire Club, the sexual-alchemical and neo-pagan symbolism of its customs and architecture, and a disclosure for the first time of the technology of self-discovery which lies at the heart of traditional Thelema.
Today the Hell Fire Club remains a society of equals, its members are both men and women of all ages, all are free to assay the journey of the soul and all convene in a sacrament of freedom honouring alike the sacred within us all.
Also included:
A facsimile of the incredibly rare ‘Hebrew Epistle’
of Dashwood’s daughter Rachel Frances Antonina.
Rare information on the 1940’s ‘Phoenix Nest’ group
which met at West Wycombe influencing the thought of occult researchers
including Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Robert Cochrane,
Evan John Jones and members up to the present day.
All is complete with ten detailed appendices and two select bibliographies
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
“..The fragments of the Hell Fire Club’s inner teachings that are gathered here have come from all surviving streams, the names of the guardians of these truths are all but lost, only a strange heraldry remains: signs of Heart, Eye, Lamp and Anchor flaming vividly through the dark….”
Originally published and circulated in private amongst members
as a series of ‘Chapter Papers’, the material in this book vividly describes
the inner world of one of the most famous (some say infamous) societies in history.
The Hell Fire Club… It’s a group that elicits responses ranging from horror to fascination to macabre obsession. It smacks of secret society rites, mysteries revealed and revelled in, hedonistic excess and laudanum-soaked dreams; yet the sensationalist image of the Hell Fire Club quickly pales in comparison to the description of the oral tradition and the modern, continuing and resurrected tradition it has become in the hands of seekers wishing to preserve the teachings and symbols of the Club and who have at their hearts the desire for self-knowledge and truth. “Secret Symbols of the Hell Fire Club” takes the reader on a journey into the darkness of the infamous caves in which the secrets were originally given, and illuminates for those who wish to see the deeper meaning of the Mystery of Life within the sanctuary of their own soul.
The book examines the use of two symbolic ‘Keys’ which unlock Dashwood’s notorious 18th century caves in surprising ways, shows the whereabouts of the legendary ‘secret passage’ in the caves and discloses the precise magical nature of the mysterious Rosicrucian lamps which lighted the passages and secret temples within. The book relates the symbolism and activities of the Club to magickal evolution and indicates the possible existence of both Orphic mystery cult and survivals of Etruscan witch cult within the Club as well as elements of Templar cosmology in the Hell Fire Caves.
Sir Francis Dashwood founded his Hell Fire Club in the middle of the 18th century and clandestine meetings were held variously at his house in West Wycombe, the caves dug under the church and at his second property Medmenham Abbey, originally a Cistercian house on the Thames built by the Templar Hugh de Bolbec in the 12th century.
Drawing its membership from the aristocracy, society ladies and satirical poets of the day, political hustlers, painters, scholars and revolutionaries, The Hell Fire Club still fascinates and summons the souls of spiritual seekers to tread the paths up to the church at West Wycombe and down again into the darkness of Sir Francis Dashwoods temple of sin…
Local legends abound as to the goings on in these caves, tales of ghosts, devils and secret passages have run like veins of gold through previous publications yet without their authors guessing the true nature of the secret nor its importance for humanity.
Whilst the essential connection between Dashwoods invoking ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ and the Rabelasian ‘Fay ce que vouldras’ has been noted over the last two centuries no-one has divined that the complex cave system dug at West Wycombe in the middle of the 18th century in fact largely follows the plan of
a mythical cave system described in Rabelais Book 5 (‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’ 1532), and that the immense six-sided mausoleum atop the hill at West Wycombe is a reflection of the six-sided Abbey of Theleme as first described in Rabelais, the measurements of which are Kabbalistic ciphers for parts of the Tree of Life.
Taking the labyrinthine caves together with the Mausoleum, the unusual church at West Wycombe, the symbolism of the House and the temples situated its gardens, Medmenham Abbey, and the large store of local oral legend the author weaves together an initiatory journey that may be taken either alone or in the company of others.
The text is remarkable in that it seeks to display not merely a history that is previously unknown, but a high philosophical, mystical and magickally potent interpretation of this extraordinary society which left its mark both architecturally in the immediate landscape and politically in the challenging of injustice, culturally in the promoting of liberty and spiritually in the establishment of a vision of unity.
Unique to this work is the inclusion of material gathered from local folklore, much of which had previously remained secret amongst families of local craftsmen and farm workers in Buckinghamshire, and the publishing of esoteric material relating to the painter and mystical occultist Maxwell Ashby Armfield (died 1972) whose articles on occultism and whose letters to Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley survive, and his wife Constance Smedley who lived at West Wycombe in the 1940’s and whose activities influenced the secretive ‘Phoenix Nest’ group part of which survived up until the end of the last century.
Extraordinary to many will be the discovery that ‘Thelema’ as a precursor to the occult system of Aleister Crowley was not merely a historical curiosity, but a vibrant intellectual and social force swelling up from the humanists of Italy and France, through to the Enlightenment. This antique Thelema had a character quite distinct from that proposed by Crowley, it was an incredibly subtle and beautiful thread which connected all mankind no matter what their nature, and this thread continues today.
The essential motto of the Hell Fire Club: ‘Sacred to Liberty & Friendship’, and its corollary ‘Dare O Guest to set Wealth at Naught’, speak of a society that honours love, sets all free and discards the trappings of wealth that divide us. The Club was founded by one of the foremost members of the English aristocracy but found many common men and women amongst its members. Today the club survived precisely because common men maintained it, twenty years ago the oral legends were passed on from friend to friend over a glass of wine in one or two of the local taverns or in the upper room of a small cottage in West Wycombe, and without that would surely have disappeared from history.
Building on that store of local legend, gathering the symbols together from the various families and individuals who safeguarded them, the Hell Fire Club has not only survived but thrived!
CONTENTS:
Chapter 1 : Maxwell Armfield& The Phoenix Nest
Chapter 2 : On the Physical Appearance of the Chapter Room
Chapter 3 : On the Lamp in the Great Chamber its origins & symbolism
Chapter 4 : The Four Doves
Chapter 5 : On the Four Degrees
Chapter 6 : On Alchemy in the Chapter
Chapter 7 : On the Stewards Office, their Dress & Jewel: being the First Key Considered
Chapter 8 : The Second Key, or the Silver Star of the Priory of St.Francis: its application and meaning
Chapter 9 : The Platonic Solids
Chapter 10 : On the Mystery of the Abbott & the Ship of Fools
Chapter 11 : The Passing of the Sun
Chapter 12 : On the Inner Temple Lamp & the Small Temples Considered
Followed by ten detailed appendices and two bibliographies
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