Search results for ""Author Tobias Churton""
Inner Traditions Bear and Company Aleister Crowley in England: The Return of the Great Beast
A detailed examination of the last 15 years of Crowley’s life• Reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with important figures, including Dion Fortune, Gerald Gardner, Jack Parsons, Dylan Thomas, and black equality activist Nancy Cunard • Explores Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work for British intelligence • Examines the development of Crowley’s later publications and his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo actively persecuting his followers in Germany After an extraordinary life of magical workings, occult fame, and artistic pursuits around the globe, Aleister Crowley was forced to spend the last fifteen years of his life in his native England, nearly penniless. Much less examined than his early years, this final period of the Beast’s life was just as filled with sex magick, espionage, romance, transatlantic conflict, and extreme behavior. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed treatment of the final years of Crowley’s life, from 1932 to 1947. He opens with Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and his return home to England, flat broke. Churton offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work as a secret operative for MI5 and explores how Crowley saw World War II as the turning point for the “New Aeon.” He examines Crowley’s notorious 1934 London trial, which resulted in his bankruptcy, and shares inside stories of Crowley’s relations with Californian O.T.O. followers, including rocket-fuel specialist Jack Parsons, and his attempt to take over H. Spencer Lewis’s Rosicrucian Order. The author reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with spiritual leaders of the time, including Dion Fortune and Wicca founder Gerald Gardner. He examines Crowley’s dealings with artists such as Dylan Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock, Augustus John, Peter Warlock, and Peter Brooks and dispels the accusations that Crowley was racist, exploring his work with lifelong friend, black equality activist Nancy Cunard. Churton also examines the development of Crowley’s later publications such as Magick without Tears as well as his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo who was actively persecuting his remaining followers in Germany. Presenting an intimate and compelling study of Crowley in middle and old age, Churton shows how the Beast still wields a wand-like power to delight and astonish.
£22.50
Inner Traditions Bear and Company Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times
Gnosticism was contemporary to early Christianity and its demise can be traced to Christianity's efforts to silence its teachings. The Gnostic message however was not destroyed but simply went underground. Starting with the first emergence of Gnosticism the author shows how its influence extended from the teachings of neo-Platonists and the magical traditions of the Middle Ages to the beliefs and ideas of the Sufis Jacob Boehme Carl Jung Rudolf Steiner and the Rosicrucians and Freemasons. In the language of spiritual freemasonry Gnosis is the rejected stone necessary for the completion of the Temple a Temple of a new cosmic understanding that today's heirs to Gnosticism continue to strive to create. The Gnostics believed that the universe embodies a ceaseless contest between opposing principles. Terrestrial life exhibits the struggle between good and evil life and death beauty and ugliness and enlightenment and ignorance: Gnosis and Agnosis. The very nature of physical space and time are obstacles to humanity's ability to remember its divine origins and recover its original unity with God. Thus the pre-eminent Gnostic secret is that we are God in potential and the purpose of bona fide Gnostic teaching is to return us to our godlike nature. Tobias Churton is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. He studied theology at Oxford University and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics as well as several other films on Christian doctrine mysticism and magical folklore. He lives in England.
£22.50
Inner Traditions Bear and Company The Lost Pillars of Enoch: When Science and Religion Were One
Explores the unified science-religion of early humanity and the impact of Hermetic philosophy on religion and spirituality • Investigates the Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe • Reveals how this original knowledge has influenced civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge • Examines how “Enoch’s Pillars” relate to the origins of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Newtonian science, William Blake, and Theosophy Esoteric tradition has long maintained that at the dawn of human civilization there existed a unified science-religion, a spiritual grasp of the universe and our place in it. The biblical Enoch--also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Thoth, or Idris--was seen as the guardian of this sacred knowledge, which was inscribed on pillars known as Enoch’s or Seth’s pillars. Examining the idea of the lost pillars of pure knowledge, the sacred science behind Hermetic philosophy, Tobias Churton investigates the controversial Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe. He traces the fragments of this sacred knowledge as it descended through the ages into initiated circles, influencing civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge. He follows the path of the pillars’ fragments through Egyptian alchemy and the Gnostic Sethites, the Kabbalah, and medieval mystic Ramon Llull. He explores the arrival of the Hermetic manuscripts in Renaissance Florence, the philosophy of Copernicus, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, and the origins of Freemasonry, including the “revival” of Enoch in Masonry’s Scottish Rite. He reveals the centrality of primal knowledge to Isaac Newton, William Stukeley, John Dee, and William Blake, resurfacing as the tradition of Martinism, Theosophy, and Thelema. Churton also unravels what Josephus meant when he asserted one Sethite pillar still stood in the “Seiriadic” land: land of Sirius worshippers. Showing how the lost pillars stand as a twenty-first century symbol for reattaining our heritage, Churton ultimately reveals how the esoteric strands of all religions unite in a gnosis that could offer a basis for reuniting religion and science.
£17.09
Watkins Media Limited Aleister Crowley: The Biography - Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master - and Spy
Blowing the myths wide open, this exciting exploration of the notorious Aleister Crowley, packed with previously unpublished information, is the true story of a poet, explorer, mystic, mountaineer, philosopher, prophet and spy.
£27.00
Inner Traditions Bear and Company The First Alchemists: The Spiritual and Practical Origins of the Noble and Holy Art
Explores the origins and practices of early alchemy. Investigating the origins of alchemy and the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone, Tobias Churton explores the oldest surviving alchemical texts, the original purpose of the “Royal Art,” and the first alchemists themselves. He reveals the theories and philosophies behind the art and how early apparatus and methods were employed by alchemists through the ages. Showing how women dominated early alchemy, Churton looks at the first known alchemist, the Jewess Maria the Prophetess, inventor of the bain marie, still in use worldwide today. He also looks at early alchemist Cleopatra (not the well-known Egyptian queen) and 3rd–4th century Egyptian female artisan Theosebeia, who had a guild of adepts working under her. He examines in depth the work of Zosimos of Panopolis and shows how Zosimos’s historic work inspired the medieval view of alchemy as an initiatory path whose stages follow the transmutation of base metals into gold. Exploring the latest research on early practices in Upper Egypt, the author discusses the political and industrial realities facing the first alchemists. He examines the late antique “Stockholm” and “Leiden” papyri, which offer detailed knowledge of the first known Greco-Egyptian chemical recipes for gold and silver dyes for metal and stone, and purple dyes for wool. He emphasizes how changing color in early alchemy was misinterpreted to imply transmutation of one metal into another. He reveals how the alchemical secrets for working with the “living statues” of the Egyptian temples was jealously guarded by the priesthood and how secrecy helped to reinforce beliefs that alchemical knowledge came from forbidden, celestial sources. He also investigates the mysterious relation between alchemy, spiritual gnosis, Hermeticism, and the Book of Enoch. Revealing the hidden legacy of the early alchemists, Churton shows how their secret workings provided a transmission line for ancient heretical doctrines to survive into the Renaissance and beyond.
£22.50
Inner Traditions Bear and Company The Spiritual Meaning of the Sixties: The Magic, Myth, and Music of the Decade That Changed the World
Unveils the spiritual meaning that fueled the artistic, political, and social revolutions of the 1960s No decade in modern history has generated more controversy and divisiveness than the tumultuous 1960s. For some, the ‘60s were an era of free love, drugs, and social revolution. For others, the Sixties were an ungodly rejection of all that was good and holy. Embarking on a profound search for the spiritual meaning behind the massive social upheavals of the 1960s, Tobias Churton turns a kaleidoscopic lens on religious and esoteric history, industry, science, philosophy, art, and social revolution to identify the meaning behind all these diverse movements. Engaging with views of mainstream historians, some of whom write off this pivotal decade as heralding an overall decline in moral values and respect for tradition, Churton examines the intricate network of spiritual forces at play in the era. He reveals spiritual principles that united the free love movement, the civil rights and anti-war movements, the hippies’ rejection of materialist culture, and the eventual rise of feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism. Taking the reader on a long strange trip from crew-cuts and Bermuda shorts to Hair and Woodstock, from liquor to psychedelics, from uncool to cool, and from matter to Soul, Churton shows how the spiritual values of the Sixties are now reemerging, with an astonishing influx of spiritual light, to once again awaken us.
£23.40
Watkins Media Limited Jerusalem: The Real Life of William Blake: A Biography
A brilliant new biography of the mystic poet and artist William Blake - and the first to explore both his struggle to make a name for himself in a society unable to appreciate his genius and his startlingly original quest for spiritual truth.'And did those feet in ancient time ...' The hymn 'Jerusalem', with its famous words by William Blake, stirs our hearts with its evocation of a new holy city built in 'England's green and pleasant land'. Equally popular, and adored by children, is the address to 'Tyger Tyger burning bright,/ In the forests of the night.' Writing of this calibre - heartfelt, vivid and profound - makes Blake one of the best-loved poets writing in English. Yet he was also a visionary artist. To follow Blake into his fascinating labyrinth of thought and feeling you need a guide who not only is deeply knowledgeable about Blake's life and times, but also shares Blake's values. That guide is Tobias Churton. Until now, Blake the guru has been lost under a myriad of inadequate biographies, college dissertations and arts commentaries, by people who have missed the luminescent keys to Blake's symbolism and liberating spirit and the essence of his titanic spiritual effort. In Jerusalem Churton creates an enthralling tapestry out of the threads of Blake's spiritual quest, as well as his struggle to put bread on his table. He conjures a superb portrait of Blake's London, and in particular the rivalries of the cultural community in which the poet-artist was usually misunderstood, and often cruelly abused. For some, Blake is a 'romantic poet' whose plain language, simple verse forms and sympathy with everyday humanity is deeply moving. To others, he is a revolutionary, an angry Cockney rebel with ideas about free sex. This biography, the first to show Blake in all his glory, is essential for those who seek spiritual awakening and an antidote to both materialism and to the commercialization of wonder.
£20.00