Magick Matters

“The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk about Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness” by Gary R. Renard

"What would you do if you were sitting quietly in your living room when a mysterious couple appeared from out of nowhere—and then told you they were “ascended masters” who had come to reveal some shocking secrets of existence and teach you the miraculous powers of advanced forgiveness? When two such teachers appeared before Gary Renard in 1992, he chose to listen to them (and ask a lot of impertinent questions). The result is this startling book: an extraordinary record of 17 mind-bending conversations that took place over nearly a decade, reorienting the author’s life and giving the world an uncompromising introduction to a spiritual teaching destined to change human history."...>>

“African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing” edited by Philip M. Peek

"This unique collection of essays by an exceptional international group of Africanists demonstrates the central role that divination continues to play throughout Africa in maintaining cultural systems and in guiding human action. African Divination Systems offers insights for current discussions in comparative epistemology, cross-cultural psychology, cognition studies, semiotics, ethnoscience, religious studies, and anthropology."...>>

“The Great Work of the Flesh: Sexual Magic East and West” by Sarane Alexandrian (kindle ebook version)

"An inside look at sex magic in Eastern and Western Mystery traditions: • Details the sex magic practices of P. B. Randolph, Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola, and Maria de Naglowska • Includes a complete overview of love magic in the Middle Ages, with accounts of the use of potions, powders, spells, and enchantments • Explores sex magic techniques of the East, including Taoist sexual alchemy Magic, almost in its entirety, is connected to sexuality. It is through the natural magic of love that sex magic operates, harnessing the forces that join lovers together. In this extensive study of sex magic in the Eastern and Western Mystery traditions, Sarane Alexandrian explains how there is a sex...>>

“Murder by Candlelight: The Gruesome Crimes Behind Our Romance with the Macabre” by Michael Knox Beran

"In the early nineteenth century, a series of murders took place in and around London which shocked the whole of England. The appalling nature of the crimes—a brutal slaying in the gambling netherworld, the slaughter of two entire households, and the first of the modern lust-murders—was magnified not only by the lurid atmosphere of an age in which candlelight gave way to gaslight, but also by the efforts of some of the keenest minds of the period to uncover the gruesomest details of the killings. These slayings took place against the backdrop of a London in which the splendor of the fashionable world was haunted by the squalor of the slums. Sir Walter Scott,...>>

“New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought” by Wouter J. Hanegraaff

"Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those...>>