One of only 28 hand numbered copies quarter bound in goatskin and autumn marbled paper in custom slipcase
Book is in new unread condition.
Daniel A. Schulke’s forthcoming work The Green Mysteries (Arcana Viridia), due to be released August 2017, is an occult herbal 25 years in the making. Meticulously illustrated with over 250 original images by renowned artist Benjamin Vierling, its primary rubric is that of an original occult pharmacopeia written from the perspective of a contemporary magical herbalist. As a whole the book emerges principally from the discipline of Occult Herbalism, which encompasses the knowledge and use of the magical, spiritual, and folkloric dimensions of plants.
As a foundational treatise introducing this work, Thirteen Pathways of Occult Herbalism speaks to its interior philosophical concerns. Circumscribing the metaparadigm of herbal magical practice, providing useful examples of its manifestation, as well as demonstrating its time-honored routes of inquiry, it examines the ways in which knowledge of this type is acquired and put into practice. This perennial wisdom animates many global spiritual traditions, especially those that have maintained their integrity of transmission even in the face of industrial development and cultural destruction.
Often concealed within the deepest strata of the Western Esoteric Traditions, this green strand of wisdom, though obscured, is a potent legacy of all magic, sorcery, and occult science. In addition to the hard sciences of botany, ethnology, agriculture and ethnopharmacology, a number of pathways can assist the magical herbalist in furthering the depth of understanding and integrity of personal approach.
VENEFICIUM: Magic, Witchcraft and the Poison Path by Daniel A. Schulke (Signed Deluxe Edition Bound in Quarter Emerald Green Snakeskin)
One of only 81 signed and hand numbered copies quarter bound in green snakeskin and black shantung.
Book is in fine, unread condition.
Veneficium concerns the intersection of magic and poison, originating in remotest antiquity and reaching into the present day. Beyond their functions as agents of bodily harm, poisons have also served as gateways of religious ecstasy, occult knowledge, and sensorial aberration, as well as the basis of cures.
Allied with Samael, the Edenic serpent of first transgression whose name in some interpretations is ‘Venom of God’, this facet of magic wends through the rites of ancient Sumer and Egypt, through European Necromancy, Alchemy, the arcane the rites of the Witches’ Sabbath, and modern-day folk magic.
Of particular note to this study are the herbs of the so-called ‘Devil’s Garden’, bearing relation to the witchcraft concepts of the Graal of Midnight, the Witches’ Supper, and the Unguentum Sabbati, the flying ointment of the witches which has exerted fascination over scholar, historians, and practitioners alike.
Beyond consideration of the toxicological dimensions of magical power, the concurrent thread of astral and philosophical poisons are also examined, and their resonance and dissonance with magical practice explored. Veneficium will be of interest to students of magic, witchcraft, alchemy, botanical folklore, medicine, and occult pharmacology.
