WOW!!
(IMG:
style_emoticons/default/worthy.gif) Thank you Daniel Schulke!!
Xoanon publishing has redefined the grimoire. This tome, on the craft of wortcunning or herb-magic, is unlike any other book on magick I have ever come across. Just the hard cover with its slightly iridescent green binding, god-faces of power and wisdom surrounding a serpent-entiwined tree-glyph; just that is enough to make your fingers itch to hold it in your hands.
The writing is intricate, dense and exquisite, written in an older style that is neither pretentious or obscure like most texts that try to accomplsh this aesthetic. The imagery is like A. Spare crossed with Middle-Earth and Wiccan symbolism. Highly charged sigils and strange numinous entities of trees and herbs swirl and stare from the pages.
By no means though is the beauty and power restricted to its look and feel. The knowledge and "praxis" gleaned from this book is original and powerful. For instance, within, one is instructed to make a special bond with a tree whereby that tree becomes like a familiar, and a destination of pilgrimage, called the "Patron-Tree". It is the “tree unto which an Herbarius is ritually devoted, a spiritual ally and source of power”.
Here, permit me to quote from one of the first pages of the book:
QUOTE
A living Tree or Wort possesses a Genius, or vital spirit, encompassing the totality of its occult powers, material virtues, its knowledge as a species; its connection to the land, and other plants in its domain. Within the secret heart of this Genius there resounds a song perfect and ineffable, bearing the unique writ of its power. This etheral musick echoes from the time of the First Garden, when each Tree was a wise angel earthed in holy ground, and the dream of mankind had not yet cast its enchantment over the Celestial Host. Though the earthly trappings of the Garden of Ancients has largely withdrawn into shadow, its shade is ever present: each plant which greens the earth still bears its spiritual legacy, and the angelic form of each may manifest itself unto man in accordance with its divine will, and the purity of his spirit.
The Pleasure-Garden of Shadow, being the Grand Spirit Dominion of plant powers, is ruled by many hosts of such Genii, bound together with other smaragdine luminaries governing times, tides, places, aspects of Nature, and specific realms of Virid Power. For those who would summon the potencies of Herbs into the Circle of the Art Magical, the true knowledge of, and congress with, this Genius, lies at the heart of such power.
And a little more:
QUOTE
Green Gnosis is the luminous stream of mystical undertaking proceeding from plant spirits and the Greenwood, as accessed by the Herbarius via the Art Magical. Also called phytognosis, it is the process whereby the Angels Arboreal bequeath wisdom unto man. Plant Folklore is the encryption and transmission , in common parlance, of localised Green Gnosis in accordance with the mastery and cunning of its steward generation.
This is not the kind of book you read, this is the kind you meditate on.
To conclude, I’d like to to say that the Bhakti-like devotional attitude towards these nature-spirits, and to Nature as a whole, is very refreshing. Not to place any disparity on the Western Tradition as it is usually known, but I find the superior and commanding attitude of the magician towards the spirits tiring and sometimes offensive. It is true that it is important to make contact in the name of one’s Holy Guardian Angel, and in the name of the Tetragrammaton, but this often leads to a haughty and authoritarian air. To stress purity of heart and intention, and a devotional love, I think the magician, and all humankind, is placed in its proper position: away from viewing itself as the crown of creation, closest living creature on earth to YHVH, and owner and manipulator of Mother Earth.
The Pleasure Garden of Shadow, by Daniel Schulke
Jan 14 2006, 06:29 PM
