The Hieroglyphic Monad

Written in thirteen days in 1564 by the renowned Elizabethan magus, Dr. John Dee, The Hieroglyphic Monad explains his discovery of the monas, or unity, underlying the universe as expressed in a hieroglyph, or symbol. Dee called The Hieroglyphic Monad a "magical parable" based on the Doctrine of Correspondences which lies at the heart of all magical practice and is the key to the hermetic quest. Through careful meditation and study of the glyph, its secrets may be slowly revealed.

Written in thirteen days in 1564 by the renowned Elizabethan magus, Dr. John Dee, The Hieroglyphic Monad explains his discovery of the monas, or unity, underlying the universe as expressed in a hieroglyph, or symbol. Dee called The Hieroglyphic Monad a "magical parable" based on the Doctrine of Correspondences which lies at the heart of all magical practice and is the key to the hermetic quest. Through careful meditation and study of the glyph, its secrets may be slowly revealed.

The Monas Hieroglyphica (or Hieroglyphic Monad) is an esoteric symbol invented and designed by John Dee, the Elizabethan Magician and Court Astrologer of Elizabeth I of England. In 1564, at the age of 37, Dee wrote the Monas Hieroglyphica as an interpretation, (or commentary on), the symbol, which is meant to express the unity of all creation. According to "legend," Dee wrote the manuscript in twelve days while in a mystical state: "I am the pen, merely, of God," Dee said, "whose Spirit, quickly writing these things through me, I wish and I hope to be." He claimed it would revolutionize astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, linguistics, mechanics, music, optics, magic and adeptship. He traveled to Hungary to present a copy of it to Maximilian II, the Holy Roman Emperor. This edition includes the remnants of Dee's diary, written primarily on the backs of old Almanacs and edited, with footnotes, by James Orchard-Halliwell, and also the catalog made of the manuscripts that were in his possession. The diary has been formatted for easy readability, and contains subject matter ranging from the daily minutia of paying servants, to Dee's self-treatments for his kidney stones, to luncheons with famous historical figures...and there is even a mention of a "strange spiritual creature roaming about the house..."

This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, often looked upon as the third Rosicrucian manifesto, has an entirely different tone from the other Rosicrucian documents. Unlike the Rosicrucian manifestoes, which address the transformation of society, The Chemical Wedding is concerned with the inner transformation of the soul. It is a deeply interior work, one which asks the reader to step into its world of symbols and walk with Christian Rosenkreutz along his path of transformation. Despite its importance as a key text of the Western esoteric traditions, this is the first ever contemporary English translation of The Chemical Wedding, made especially for this edition by Joscelyn Godwin. Also included in this edition is an introduction and commentary by Adam McLean, which illuminates the transformative symbolism.

Reproduction of the original: The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara by John Dee

"Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult Mind Divination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of criticism that takes the universe—seen and unseen, known and unknowable—as its text. In The Occult Mind, Christopher I. Lehrich explores the history of magic in Western thought, suggesting a bold new understanding of the claims made about the power of various belief systems. In closely interlinked essays on such disparate topics as ley lines, the Tarot, the Corpus Hermeticum, writing and ritual in magical practice, and early attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, Lehrich treats magic and its parts as an intellectual object that requires interpretive zeal on the part of readers/observers. Drawing illuminating parallels between the practice of magic and more recent interpretive systems—structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics—Lehrich deftly suggests that the specter of magic haunts all such attempts to grasp the character of knowledge. Offering a radical new approach to the nature and value of occult thought, Lehrich's brilliantly conceived and executed book posits magic as a mode of theory that is intrinsically subversive of normative conceptions of reason and truth. In elucidating the deep parallels between occult thought and academic discourse, Lehrich demonstrates that sixteenth-century occult philosophy often touched on issues that have become central to philosophical discourse only in the past fifty years.