Occult & Esoterica
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[SCHULKE, Daniel A.] The Green Mysteries. Arcana Viridia: A Granary of the Fauns. An Occult Herbarium (SIGNED Hardcover)
[SCHULKE, Daniel A.] The Green Mysteries. Arcana Viridia: A Granary of the Fauns. An Occult Herbarium (SIGNED Hardcover)
Images by Benjamin A. Vierling
Three Hands Press, 2022. First Edition. Hardcover. Quarto. 476 pp. This copy SIGNED by Daniel Schulke on the title page. Limited to 1500 hand-numbered copies. Bound in green cloth with gilt title to front, spine titled and decorated in gilt. With 12 full-page color plates and over 300 illustrations in b&w, by Benjamin A. Vierling. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.
Being a compendium of trees and herbs from countless spiritual traditions, this exhaustive Herbal of esoteric botany examines in detail the folklore, magical uses and spiritual essences of the vegetal kingdom. While presenting the material through both magical and mythopoetic narrative, the stance of the book is also grounded firmly in supportive disciplines such as botany, chemistry, and anthropology, and also includes up-to-date phylogenetic and pharmacological findings. The text focuses especially upon the Doctrine of Plant Essence, and how those powers are utilized in the active practice of magic and sorcery.
Interspersed with encyclopedic plant entries are short narratives addressing such concepts as the Witches’ Flying Ointment, intoxicating incense, the herbal dimension of Alchemy, and the ‘Green Saints’ such as Al-Khidir, the medieval Wildman, and the forest-dwelling Nymphs who nourished the Greek gods. More than a mere collation of previously existing works on plants, much of the material is drawn directly from the author's private field notes, diaries, and manuals of magical operation from 1991-2016. Among the Twenty-Seven essays included within are 'Devils in the Basilica,' 'The Meaning of Viriditas', and 'The Rhabdomantic Art.' Also present is a special inclusion of a text entitled The Dream-Book of Sylvanus.