This publication includes the first English translation of the 1310 biography of Hasan-i-Sabah by Rashid al-Din: The Biography of Our Master (Sar-Guzasht-i-Sayyidna)Hasan-i-Sabah was born in northern Persia around 1050 and died in 1124. He was an Ismaili missionary (or dai) who founded the Nizari Ismailis after the usurpation of the Fatimid Imamate by the military dictator of Egypt. It may be said that Hasan founded and operated the world...

Powerful lumber interests stood in the way of the first campaigns to save the redwood trees of Humboldt County, California, but they were boldly opposed and pushed back. This history of the early 1900s recalls the Progressive Era crusades of women and men who prevailed against great odds, protecting the best of California’s northern redwood forests.This book tells the forgotten, dramatic story of early 20th-century Californians and other Americans who were the first group to preser...

Thelemic magician James Wasserman offers an immensely useful instructional guide for journaling the inward journey that comes from magical workings.This important collection includes Aleister Crowley's two most important instructional writings on the design and purpose of the magical diary, John St. John and A Master of the Temple. These were the only two works regarding the magical diary published in Crowley's lifetime. Both were first published ...

Sketching out a fascinating network of historic figures, cults, and Christendom, this book by an occult-studies expert and respected authority on magic and sorcery takes Western spiritual traditions seriously—but examines them with common sense and self-effacing humor. Working backward from the Freemasons to one of their original orders, the 14th-century Knights Templar, the account considers sorcery, heresy, and intrigues; explores the legend that the Knights possessed a powerful secret d...

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...

In The Weiser Concise Guide to Practical Astrology, Priscilla Costello introduces the reader to the basic principles of modern astrology and unveils the secrets of this elegantly developed language of symbols.Costello shares with the reader both the philosophical and esoteric world view of astrology, while exploring the meanings of signs, planets, houses, and aspects on many levels, as well as its connection to psychology, religion and spirituality, and related esoteric studies.The Weiser ...

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...

A concise guide to the history, theory, and practice of alchemy (the “great work”)—the art of working with the energies of nature for spiritual development, healing, and transformation.Alchemy is a means of understanding and working in concert with the energies of nature for spiritual development, healing, and transformation. In this book, Brian Cotnoir offers a step-by-step introduction that explores alchemy’s mysteries while illustrating its use as a modern spiri...

The Unsung HeroinesHave you ever stood in a redwood grove and wondered how it was saved from the loggers' saws? The answer isn't as simple as a few famous names or a single act of government.Who Saved the Redwoods? tells the gripping, untold story of the women who formed the front line of the forest conservation movement in the 1920s. This was an era of intense, industrial-scale logging, when it was seen as inevitable that the ancient forests would...

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...

Secret Societies of the Middle Ages explores the foundations of modern secret societies, examining the history and known facts of three very different organizations.The Assassins of the Middle East-how they evolved from an Islamic religious sect into one of the most feared groups in all the world and how the very name of this ancient order became the word used for political killings of this nature.The Templars of Europe-from a...

The timeless brilliance of this exhaustive survey of the best classical writers of antiquity on Pythagoras was first published in 1687 in Thomas Stanley’s massive tome, The History of Philosophy. It remains as contemporary today as it was over three hundred years ago.The text of the 1687 book has been reset and modernized to make it more accessible to the modern reader. Spelling has been regularized, obsolete words not found in a modern dictionary have been replaced, and c...