Birds were once considered to be messengers from the Gods to humankind, and the Tarot was once called "...the game of Gods and Birds." Ancient societies all over the World set great store by their Augurs, who were experts at divination by analysis of birds. These magical magician-priests had the skills to interpret the flight patterns and behavior of birds in order to translate the desires of their Deities. Every bird in this beautifully illustrated 78-card deck has been carefully chosen for its relationship to each Tarot card, and uses mythology, folklore, and legend, as well as the natural characteristics of each bird, to underline that connection. We invite you to fly into the world of magic as you learn the secret language of birds. Includes cards and book.
Containing historical facts, myths and real-life spiritual encounters with birds, this book features information for bird lovers who are interested in esoterica, history, folklore, and spiritual symbolism of birds throughout the world.
"The Secret Language of Colour Cards are your key to unlocking the extraordinary healing power of colour. Combining tips and information on colours with powerful healing processes and affirmations, this vibrant and powerful card set by bestselling author Inna Segal is a tool you can draw on daily to receive inspired messages of guidance from the Universe and to restore your body to its natural state of health and harmony. Featuring 45 stunning cards, each infused with its unique healing vibration, and an accompanying guidebook, The Secret Language of Colour Cards will assist you in adding more colour, creativity, joy, peace and balance to all areas of your life." -- back of box.
Best known as a novelist, this poet uses fiction-writing techniques to create memorable settings and characters, and a narrative voice that ranges from contemplation to irony. Darker forces of alienation also intrude in the form of preoccupations about belonging and dislocation, belief and doubt, rigidity and movement, and time-honored questions about how the real world is changed by the attempt to capture it in art.
Chance, the great beloved of gamblers, lovers, generals and kings, has long held sway over mortal affairs. Whether assuming the form of the goddess Fortuna and her ever-turning wheel, or the abstract mathematic of 'randomness', her favor is universally sought, and her displeasure feared. To the devotee of Chance, the arts of divination may be regarded as her secret liturgy, providing glimpses of the unknown to those she esteems. Into the retort of the alchemist-poet, Pendell compounds portent, omen, oracle, and the art of prediction to distill The Language of the Birds, a reverie upon the nature of the Goddess of Fortune and the sacred function of Chance. This second Three Hands Press edition contains a new foreword to the work by Andrew Schelling, author of 'Tracks Along the Left Coast' (Counterpoint Press, 2018), as well as one new color frontispiece by the author.
2017 Esoteric Book of the Year As voted by the membership of the Occult of Personality’s Chamber of Reflection Dr. Joscelyn Godwin, Colgate University, emeritus “Besides gratifying the bibliophile, the contents follow scholarly principles, and the notes and documentation are as thorough as one could wish .... Even if only partially provable, The Game of Saturn opens a new and darker vista on the pagan Renaissance. No student of that current should ignore it” Renaissance Quarterly Volume LXXI, No. 2 Niketas Siniossoglou. National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens “The Game of Saturn by Peter Mark Adams is a fascinating read. The author calls it “a literary detective story”, but this may well be an understatement ... Adams decodes astral, alchemical, and sexual associations that are plausible, and shows how they may have been redeployed into visual format ... The Game of Saturn is a stimulating read, and it is difficult to put it down. It will appeal to all scholars of Renaissance intellectual history, esotericism, and Plethon. Published by Scarlet Imprint, the book is a rare example of fine printmaking, featuring beautiful reproductions of the Sola-Busca deck.” Aries - Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 18 (2018) 287–304. The Game of Saturn is the first full length, scholarly study of the enigmatic Renaissance masterwork known as the Sola-Busca tarot. It reveals the existence of a pagan liturgical and ritual tradition active amongst members of the Renaissance elite and encoded within the deck. Beneath its beautifully decorated surface, its imagery ranges from the obscure to the grotesque; we encounter scenes of homoeroticism, wounding, immolation and decapitation redolent of hidden meanings, violent transformations and obscure rites. For the first time in over five hundred years, the clues embedded within the cards reveal a dark Gnostic grimoire replete with pagan theurgical and astral magical rites. Careful analysis demonstrates that the presiding deity of this ‘cult object’ is none other than the Gnostic demiurge in its most archaic and violent form: the Afro-Levantine serpent-dragon, Ba’al Hammon, also known as Kronos and Saturn, though more notoriously as the biblical Moloch, the devourer of children. Conveyed from Constantinople to Italy in the dying years of the Byzantine Empire, the pagan Platonist George Gemistos Plethon sought to ensure the survival of the living essence of Neoplatonic theurgy by transplanting it to the elite families of the Italian Renaissance. Within that violent and sorcerous milieu, Plethon’s vision of a theurgically enlightened elite mutated into its dark shadow – a Saturnian brotherhood, operating within a cosmology of predation, which sought to channel the draconian current to preserve elite wealth, power and control. This development marks the birth of an ‘illumined elite’ over three centuries before Adam Weishaupt’s ‘Illuminati.’ The deck captures the essence of this magical tradition and constitutes a Western terma whose talismanic properties may serve to establish an initiatory link with the current. This work fully explores the historical context for the deck’s creation against the background of tense Ferrarese-Venetian diplomatic intrigue and espionage. The recovery of the deck’s encoded narratives constitutes a significant contribution to Renaissance scholarship, art history, tarot studies and the history of Western esotericism.
The Book of Lies was written by English occultist and teacher Aleister Crowley under the pen name of Frater Perdurabo. As Crowley describes it: "This book deals with many matters on all planes of the very highest importance. It is an official publication for Babes of the Abyss, but is recommended even to beginners as highly suggestive." The book consists of 91 chapters, each of which consists of one page of text. The chapters include a question mark, poems, rituals, instructions, and obscure allusions and cryptograms. The subject of each chapter is generally determined by its number and its corresponding Qabalistic meaning.
The Camelot Oracle is a card system - not a tarot - that allows people to explore the Arthurian archetypes, adopt champions and embark on adventurous journeys of self-discovery using the cards and a brilliant and amazing map.
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
