Download or read book Occult Paris written by Tobias Churton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How fin-de-siècle Paris became the locus for the most intense revival of magical practices and doctrines since the Renaissance • Examines the remarkable lives of occult practitioners Joséphin Peladan, Papus, Stanislas de Guaïta, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Jules Doinel, and others • Reveals how occult activity deeply influenced many well-known cultural movements, such as Symbolism, the Decadents, modern music, and the “psychedelic 60s” During Paris’s Belle Époque (1871-1914), many cultural movements and artistic styles flourished--Symbolism, Impressionism, Art Nouveau, the Decadents--all of which profoundly shaped modern culture. Inseparable from this cultural advancement was the explosion of occult activity taking place in the City of Light at the same time. Exploring the magical, artistic, and intellectual world of the Belle Époque, Tobias Churton shows how a wide variety of Theosophists, Rosicrucians, Martinists, Freemasons, Gnostics, and neo-Cathars called fin-de-siècle Paris home. He examines the precise interplay of occultists Joséphin Peladan, Papus, Stanislas de Guaïta, and founder of the modern Gnostic Church Jules Doinel, along with lesser known figures such as Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Paul Sédir, Charles Barlet, Edmond Bailly, Albert Jounet, Abbé Lacuria, and Lady Caithness. He reveals how the work of many masters of modern culture such as composers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, writers Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, and painters Georges Seurat and Alphonse Osbert bear signs of immersion in the esoteric circles that were thriving in Paris at the time. The author demonstrates how the creative hermetic ferment that animated the City of Light in the decades leading up to World War I remains an enduring presence and powerful influence today. Where, he asks, would Aleister Crowley and all the magicians of today be without the Parisian source of so much creativity in this field? Conveying the living energy of Paris in this richly artistic period of history, Churton brings into full perspective the characters, personalities, and forces that made Paris a global magnet and which allowed later cultural movements, such as the “psychedelic 60s,” to rise from the ashes of post-war Europe.
Download or read book Occult Botany written by Paul Sédir and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Includes a dictionary of nearly 300 magical plants with descriptions of each plant’s scientific name, common names, elemental qualities, ruling planets, and zodiacal signatures, with commentary on medico-magical properties and uses • Explores methods of phytotherapy and plant magic, including the Paracelsian “transplantation of diseases,” ritual pacts with trees, the secret ingredients of witches’ ointments, and the composition of magical philters • Explains the occult secrets of phytogenesis, plant physiology, and plant physiognomy (classification of plants according to the doctrine of signatures) Merging the scientific discipline of botany with ancient, medieval, and Renaissance traditions of occult herbalism, this seminal guide was first published in French in 1902 as a textbook for students of Papus’s École hermétique and sparked a revival in the study of magical herbalism in early twentieth-century France. Author Paul Sédir, pseudonym of Yvon Le Loup (1871-1926), explains the occult secrets of phytogenesis (the esoteric origin and evolutionary development of the plant kingdom), plant physiology (the occult anatomy of plants), and plant physiognomy (classification of plants according to the doctrine of signatures). Unveiling the mysteries behind planetary and zodiacal attributions, he provides readers with the keys to make their own informed determinations of the astral properties of plants. Moving from theory into practice, Sédir explores various methods of phytotherapy and plant magic, including the Paracelsian “transplantation of diseases,” the secret ingredients of witches’ ointments, and the composition of magical philters. In the third section of the book, Sédir offers a dictionary of magical plants that covers nearly 300 plant species with descriptions of their astral signatures, occult properties, and medico-magical uses. Compiled from an array of rare sources and esoterica, this classic text includes a wealth of additional materials and supplemental charts and diagrams drawn from Sédir’s occult colleagues, all of whom adopted and expanded upon Sédir’s pioneering system of plant correspondences.
Download or read book Eliphas L vi and the French Occult Revival written by Christopher McIntosh and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Aleister Crowley written by Tobias Churton and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At last, the unexpurgated, true story of the amazing Aleister Crowley—philosopher, poet, artists, writer, magus, explorer, parapsychology—and spy. Packed with fresh research and previously unpublished ‘Crowleyana.’ For 100 years, Aleister Crowley’s true achievements have been suppressed and his true character defaced in a campaign of vilification unparalleled in British history. Until now, Crowley’s life has not been written—it has been written over. Tobias Churton is a world authority on Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Gnosticism. In writing Aleister Crowley, he enjoyed complete access to all Crowley’s restricted papers, unpublished letters and personal diaries kept in a trust at London’s Warburg Institute and in the Ordo Templi Orientis archives. Ninety percent of the authentic material here has never before been published.
Download or read book Magic in the Cloister written by Sophie Page and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Perfect Medium written by Clément Chéroux and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early days of photography, many believed and hoped that the camera would prove more efficient than the human eye in capturing the unseen. Spiritualists and animists of the nineteenth century seized on the new technology as a method of substantiating the existence of supernatural beings and happenings. This fascinating book assembles more than 250 photographic images from the Victorian era to the 1960s, each purporting to document an occult phenomenon: levitations, apparitions, transfigurations, ectoplasms, spectres, ghosts, and auras. Drawn from the archives of European and American occult societies and private and public collections, the photographs in many cases have never before been published. The Perfect Medium studies these rare and remarkable photographs through cultural, historical, and artistic lenses. More than mere curiosities, the images on film are important records of the cultural forces and technical methods that brought about their production. They document in unexpected ways a period when developing photographic technology merged with a popular obsession with the occult to create a new genre of haunting experimental photographs.
Download or read book Le Corbusier and the Occult written by Jan Birksted and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Le Corbusier grew up in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, a city described by Karl Marx as "one unified watchmaking industry." Among the unifying social structures of La Chaux-de-Fonds was the Loge L'Amitié, the Masonic lodge with its francophone moral, social, and philosophical ideas, including the symbolic iconography of the right angle (rectitude) and the compass (exactitude). Le Corbusier would later describe these as "my guide, my choice" and as his "time-honored ideas, ingrained and deep-rooted in the intellect, like entries from a catechism." Through exhaustive research that challenges long-held beliefs, J.K. Birksted's Le Corbusier and the Occult traces the structure of Le Corbusier's brand of modernist spatial and architectural ideas based on startling new documents in hitherto undiscovered family and local archives."--Publisher.
Download or read book The Paris Labyrinth written by Gilles Legardinier and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ingenious illusionist Vincent embarks on a thrilling adventure in turn-of-the-twentieth century France to unlock the mysteries of the past in a quest for lost treasure. Along the way, he battles against dark forces as he tries to discern who he can trust in a race against the clock. Vincent, more than anyone, knows what it means to keep a secret. With his troupe of talented craftsmen--the only family he has--he designs hidden compartments for priceless treasures and passageways for undetectable escape routes. The rich and powerful who hire him pay handsomely for his work, and for his discretion--they know only his first name, and his business is strictly word-of-mouth. As Paris celebrates the 1889 World's Fair, the city fills with visitors who come to see the controversial new Eiffel Tower with its gravity-defying escalators, to tout their latest inventions, or to scout for prospective investment opportunities. Vincent takes on an urgent mission so secret he doesn't tell anyone about it. Suddenly, he and his team become the target of assassination attempts. In a race against time, as death licks at their heels, they puzzle over who could be behind the violence. Is it one of their clients trying to erase the secrets they had been hired to conceal? Has their work somehow provoked the dark forces of the occult? Who is this faceless adversary, lurking in the shadows, ready to strike them anywhere, anytime? Confronted with mysteries uncovered from the past, and a life-or-death challenge that tests the limits of his ability, Vincent will do everything in his power to thwart the menace and protect his friends ... if only he can survive. What he is about to discover will shatter everything he thought he knew about the world....
Download or read book Voices in the Dark written by William Patrick Patterson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jerusalem written by Tobias Churton and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Truly astonishing in its detail … this must be one of the most illuminating and enlightening biographies to date.’ Michael Eavis cbe, Founder of the Glastonbury Festival A brilliant new biography of the mystic poet and artist William Blake – and the first to explore his startlingly original quest for spiritual truth, as well as the profound lessons he has for us all today. The hymn ‘Jerusalem’, with its famous words by William Blake, stirs our hearts with its evocation of a new holy city built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. However, until now, the spiritual essence of William Blake has been buried under myriad inadequate biographies, college dissertations and arts commentaries, written by people who have missed the luminescent keys to Blake’s symbolism and liberating spirit. Any attempt to uncover the ‘real’ Blake is thwarted by his status as a legend or ‘national treasure’. In Jerusalem! Tobias Churton expertly takes you beyond this superficial façade, showing you Blake the esoteric genius – a myth-maker, brilliantly using symbols and theology to express his unique insights into the nature of body, mind and spirit. Churton is not only deeply knowledgeable about Blake’s life and times, but also uses his shared values with Blake to enter into his labyrinth of thought and feeling. Challenging the conventional views of Blake as either a ‘romantic poet’ or a rebel with ideas about free sex, Tobias Churton’s startling new biography reveals, at last, the real William Blake in all his glory, so that anyone who sings ‘Jerusalem’ in future will see its beauty with renewed understanding. With access to a large body of never-before-published records – letters, diaries, pamphlets and books – Tobias Churton casts unprecedented light and perspective on William Blake’s life and times. Blake’s writing – heartfelt, vivid and profound – accounts for his status as one of the best-loved poets writing in English. Americans need no reminding that Blake inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson and American visionary Walt Whitman. Yet he spent the larger part of his creative career being ridiculed and suppressed. In Jerusalem! Churton conjures a superb portrait of Blake’s London, and in particular the rivalries of the cultural community in which the poet-artist was often misunderstood. He argues that Blake believed Man does not ‘belong’ to society; rather,we are all members of the Divine Body, co-existent with God. He was concerned with a total spiritual revival – what had gone wrong with Man, and how to put it right. Blake’s message has proved to be as challenging to today’s readers as it was to his contemporaries. Blake perceived, so far ahead of his time, that the philosophy of materialism would dominate the world – a culture from which we now yearn to break free. Jerusalem! is unashamedly ambitious in its scope and objective. Churton ends once and for all the persistent notion of Blake as a startling peculiarity, whilst emancipating him from the labels of ‘Romantic poet’ or ‘national treasure’. Even if it means sacrificing some cherished illusions or uncovering a few painful surprises, this compelling biography reveals, for the first time, the true spirit of William Blake.
Download or read book Napoleon s Sorcerers written by Darius Alexander Spieth and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Napoleon's rule, Freemasonic circles in France invented rituals that allegedly first took place in the temple structures of ancient Egypt. This book looks at the cultural environment and intellectual background of one such pseudo-Egyptian secret society, the Sacred Order of the Sophisians.
Download or read book Aleister Crowley in Paris written by Tobias Churton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Aleister Crowley’s 30-year-long intimate association with Paris • Investigates the tales of Crowley “raising Pan,” going mad, and working gay sex magick in Paris • Uncovers Crowley’s involvement in the Belle Époque with sculptor Auguste Rodin and other artists and in the 1920s with Berenice Abbott, Nancy Cunard, Man Ray, André Gide, and Aimée Crocker • Reveals Crowley’s “expulsion” from Paris in 1929 as a high-level conspiracy against Crowley Exploring occultist, magician, poet, painter, and writer Aleister Crowley’s longstanding and intimate association with Paris, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed account of Crowley’s activities in the City of Light. Using previously unpublished letters and diaries, Churton explores how Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn’s Inner Order in Paris in 1900 and how, in 1902, he relocated to Montparnasse. Soon engaged to Anglo-Irish artist Eileen Gray, Crowley pontificates and parties with English, American, and French artists gathered around sculptor Auguste Rodin: all keen to exhibit at Paris’s famed Salon d’Automne. In 1904—still dressed as “Prince Chioa Khan” and recently returned from his Book of the Law experience in Cairo—Crowleydines with novelist Arnold Bennett at Paillard’s. In 1908 Crowley is back in Paris to prove it’s possible to attain Samadhi (or “knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel”) while living a modern life in a busy metropolis. In 1913 he organizes a demonstration for artistic and sexual freedom at Oscar Wilde’s tomb. Until war spoils all in 1914, Paris is Crowley’s playground. The author details how, after returning from America in 1920, and though based at his “Abbey of Thelema” in Sicily, Crowley can’t leave Paris alone. When Mussolini expels him from Italy, Paris becomes his home from 1924 until 1929. Churton reveals Crowley’s part in the jazz-age explosion of modernism, as the lover of photographer Berenice Abbott and many others, and how he enjoyed camaraderie with Man Ray, Nancy Cunard, André Gide, and Aimée Crocker. The author explores Crowley’s adventures in Tunisia, Algeria, the Riviera,his battle with heroin addiction, his relationship with daughter Astarte Lulu—raised at Cefalù—and finally, a high-level ministerial conspiracy to get him out of Paris. Reconstructing Crowley’s heyday in the last decade and a half of France’s Belle Époque and the “roaring Twenties,” this book illuminates Crowley’s place within the artistic, literary, and spiritual ferment of the great City of Light.
Download or read book Lisette s Paris Notebook written by Catherine Bateson and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do you wear to Paris? Ami and I discussed it for hours but I still couldn't think of anything suitable. Ami said a trench coat with nothing underneath but your best underwear. That was only if some boy was meeting you at the airport, I said. Eighteen-year-old Lisette has just arrived in Paris (France!) - the city of haute couture and all things stylish - to practise her French and see great works of art. Her clairvoyant landlady Madame Christophe forces her to attend language lessons with a bunch of international students but soon Lise discovers she's more interested in studying boys than art or verbs ... When the undeniably hot Anders jogs into her life it feels too good to be true. Things get even more complicated when she is pursued by Hugo, a charming English antiques dealer. Can she take a chance and follow her own dreams? How far into the future can Madame Christophe see? And could Lise really be falling in love - in Paris?
Download or read book Dreamhounds of Paris written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press. This book was released on 2018-09 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow the Trail of Cthulhu into the Dreamlands
Download or read book The Werewolf of Paris written by Guy Endore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Endore's classic werewolf novel - now back in paperback for the first time in over forty years - helped define a genre and set a new standard in horror fiction The werewolf is one of the great iconic figures of horror in folklore, legend, film, and literature. And connoisseurs of horror fiction know that The Werewolf of Paris is a cornerstone work, a masterpiece of the genre that deservedly ranks with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Endore's classic novel has not only withstood the test of time since it was first published in 1933, but it boldly used and portrayed elements of sexual compulsion in ways that had never been seen before, at least not in horror literature. In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across pre-Revolutionary France seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.
Download or read book Madame Blavatsky written by Gary Lachman and published by TarcherPerigee. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the life of the cofounder of the Theosophical Society, examining her legacy and the controversy surrounding her.
Download or read book Enchantress of Paris written by Marci Jefferson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The alignment of the stars at Marie Mancini's birth warned that although she would be gifted at divination, she was destined to disgrace her family. Nonetheless, Cardinal Mazarin brings his niece to the opulent French court, where the forbidden occult arts thrive in secret. In France, Marie discovers that her powerful uncle rules, using Marie's sister Olympia to hold the Sun King, Louis XIV, in thrall. Desperate to avoid her mother's dying wish that she spend her life in a convent, Marie burns her grimoire, trading Italian superstitions for polite sophistication. As her star rises, King Louis becomes enchanted by Marie's charm. Sensing a chance to grab even greater power, Cardinal Mazarin pits the sisters against each other, showering Marie with diamonds and silks in exchange for bending King Louis to his will. Disgusted by Mazarin's ruthlessness, Marie rebels. She sacrifices everything, but exposing Mazarin's darkest secret threatens to tear France apart. When even King Louis' love fails to protect Marie, she must summon her powers of divination. Fraught with conspiracy and passion, Enchantress of Paris is a captivating historical novel about a woman whose love was more powerful than magic.
