Dearest Magdalena:
My recent swing through Europe and India has netted me a number of titles for our various clients. I’ve taken the liberty of glossing a number of them. I’m sure you and your team will be able to do a more thorough analysis prior to marketing and sale, but I have to admit, I had to scratch a few curious itches and being stuck in Belgium for a week didn’t help matters. BTW: Dietrich sends his love. Some will want to be looked over by our translators and a few will need a touch of clean-up in that regard.
Love Always
-Desmond.
The White Dharma
Provenance: Acquired as a gift from a destitute lama in exchange for help with a bit of bother near Bhopal. He had a dozen copies. I’m fairly certain he copies the same text from memory as a form of meditation.
Desc: A scroll, about the length of my arm.
Genre:Spellbook (Primarily abjurations, and protective spells. Wardings,scrying, and healing magick.)
Rarity: I don’t think much of it has been translated outside of the country. This may be a real find.
Additional Notes: In between chapters there is some talk about the philosophy of magick. While the book is a exemplary specimen of a repository of white magick, I found the philosophy sections more engaging. Even to an old cynic like me.
The Endless Wheel: Samsara for beginners.
Provenance: Picked up in a used book store in Delhi. Gave the proprietor my card. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing him again.
Desc: Bog standard hardback binding
Genre: Occultism overview for Indian Culture. (Fairly well researched. I only spotted two things that I thought questionable and one long debunked myth.
Rarity: New to me. Have not heard of the publisher ("Raksha Press") and Google was no help. They may not have a webpage.
Additional Notes: interesting ideas about how to “Short Circuit” the reincarnation cycle. Not sure i’m keen to try them out though.
The Street Magi’s Guide:
Provenance: Gift from an old friend while visiting old haunts in Southwark.
Desc: Slim glossy volume. If the binding is any clue, I’d say it was a self-published Lulu book.
Genre: How-to guide for the practicing magus. Good advice too if a little coarse in the language. I have to admit it had me chuckling.
Rarity:I expect to see more of these.
Additional Notes: The author of this one reminds me of Crowley. Either the greatest occultist of his age or the greatest bullshit artist of his age. Not sure it makes a difference, as any sufficiently advanced bullshit is indistinguishable from cosmic truth.
The Pollard Compilation
Provenance: Estate Sale (Pollard)
Desc: Proper old school style grimoire(s) with multiple locks
Genre:potpourri
Rarity: I think this may be the only collection of it. although I have seen certain parts in other places.
Additional Notes: Pollard’s personal papers and collection of occult bric-a-brac was somewhat daunting to me. (Bibliomania. It’s the quiet insanity.) In any event, the one’s I could acquire at auction were a mish-mosh of spells, advice, philosophy, legendry, and essentially, the kitchen sink. Only had time to browse lightly. Interesting resonances, that I think may have caused his death. Of course, his estate sale was a bit of a rogues gallery as well. God only knows what’s in here and who’s interested. Should be a seller’s market assuming the hungry looking ones aren’t ardent psychopaths.
Tribulations
Provenance: A fence I know in Berlin
Desc: Large hardbound book. Color photography
Genre: Energy control
Rarity: I’ve seen translations in English and French
Additional Notes: A treatise on the uses of pain(self inflicted or otherwise) as a means of raising energy for certain types of spellcasting. Not my cup of tea really. The pictures are a bit grisly, but professionally taken.
The movement, concentration, and storage of Vril Energies
Provenance: One of my Frenemies in Bern. I swear Otto is a patholigical liar.
Desc: Three thick file folders with double spools of ribbon holding them together. Stamped as property of the Ahnenerbe Otto had them crammed into an old ammo case.
Genre: Energy Control (fairly complete and well done. See below)
Rarity: Only copies I know of extant.
Additional Notes: I admit my German is a bit rusty, but I was impressed by the germanic thoroughness of this work. But then again this was a time when Magick was considered a form of science we don’t really understand all that well, so it was an effort to codify and concretize certain praxis into a workable and replicable system. Such things are usually doomed. But they did, by my reckoning, a serious amount of testing. The margin notes are interesting. They indicate some vitriolic back and forth between scientist-magi with starkly different attitudes towards the material. I’m fairly sure I recognize Werner Von Braun’s handwriting.
The Carnal Rites
Provenance: Traded for that Peruvian Codex we acquired last year. Got it from a Latvian shaman
Desc: Middling sized hardbound book. covered in vermillion paisley.
Genre: Tantrika/Sex Magick
Rarity: I’d heard of this before, It piqued my curiousity.
Additional Notes: Whatever people get up to in the privacy of their own coven is their own business. This is a fairly pedestrian work, and is mostly concerned with sexual activity that doesn’t involve pain, but may involve multiple partners. I must admit I am no longer limber enough for much of this ritual work and some of the most advanced ritus in this volume made my gorge a bit bouyant. I am not a prude, but there ARE limits.
On the Eating of Hearts
Provenance: Allowed to copy the text while visiting an academic friend in Belfast.
Desc: A monograph. Not particularly long.
Genre: Ritual
Rarity: Padraig says that this thing has been knocking around in anthropology circles for a while.
Additional Notes: a treatise on the concept found in certain cultures that if you ate an enemies heart you could absorb his power. The basic premise is, of course without merit if you don’t actually perform the ritual, which had been lost up until a cache of writings turned up in Egypt in the 1970’s. Being the way I am, I don’t know that it would necessarily help me much. I also think that the research staff will be hard pressed to test the theory.
Theurgy for the Curious
Provenance: Bought at a hole-in-the-wall operation in Charring Cross.
Desc: Thumb thick paperback. If the cover art is any indication, this was published in the late 60’s
Genre: Theurgical praxis and the study of enochian
Rarity: I can only hope these are rarer than hen’s teeth.
Additional Notes: Possibly one of the most unintentionally dangerous books I have ever seen floating around. I can only imagine the number of lives wrecked by dicking around with this half-researched pile of drivel. I bought the damned thing to get it out of circulation. Angels aren’t to be messed with lightly. And they have exactly NO sense of humor.
Ectoplasm and it’s uses
Provenance: Peace offering from Ambrose Stern. (Mental note: Put him back on the X-mas list.)
Desc: Ochre hardback book. black and white daugerrotypes.
Genre: Victorian spiritualism
Rarity: haven’t seen one of these in ages.
Additional Notes: This one took me back. a good 45% of this book is wrong-headed or outright fraudulent, but there does appear to be an interesting and competently written chapter on pacifying spirits and funerary rites. In fact, on second look, It appears to have been written by another author entirely. Maybe the original author included older material in order to give his tome a sniff of class. Who knows. I think I may have actually attended one of the seances in the pictures.
Chaos Magick for the beginners
Provenance: Pengo, from an anonymous FTP server in Iceland.
Desc: Had to print it out. The original file re-encrypts itself after 30 days. It also resists formatting for printing, but Pengo was able to assist me.
Genre:Chaos Magick
Rarity: Because of the nature of the text, I may have the only clean copy on paper.
Additional Notes: Cracking good read. Posits the idea that Chaos magick becomes second nature to the practitioner who “makes a home for chaos in his heart” Can’t decide if it’s dangerous,bullshit, or if it’s Magick-Punk.
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