Yoga today connotes many images and ideas -- from holy men on a high mountaintop to throngs of young women toting designer mats. Yoga, meaning 'union,' is actually a many-layered discipline designed to help an individual attain health, serenity, focus, and ultimately, union with the Divine. Aleister Crowley was one of the first Europeans to practice yoga and believed the practice was essential to spiritual growth, stating that 'Magick is a Pyramid built layer by layer. The work of the Body...

The ultimate herbalist's bible.Herbalism is one of the cornerstones of magical work, and The Weiser Concise Guide to Herbal Magick presents this vast subject in an accessible, practical manner. While it includes those plants classically associated with magick, such as mugwort, mandrake, and nightshade, it also provides lore and usage of more common plants, such as olive, coconut, tiger lily, orchids, and palms. Other herbs include heliotrope, lotus, mallow, nettle, oak, yew, and willow.Thi...

Aleister Crowley wrote the Gnostic Mass in 1913. He described it as the central ritual, public and private, of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). It is a mythic hymn to the wedding of scientific truth and religious aspiration; the celebrant is encouraged to leave superstition and dogma at the door and join in an ecstatic tribute to the glorious nature of reality. The Gnostic Mass offers a truly modern spirituality and it is being performed on a regular basis throughout the civilized w...