The Celestial Art
Various Authors
In this guide to the Way of the Eight Winds, Nigel Pennick explores the history and practice of traditional European Pagan spirituality, a path that recognizes and celebrates our relationship with the cosmos and the creativity of nature.
The author looks at the Eight Directions and the powers of their Winds, the Tides of the Day, stations and houses of the Sun, and the eightfold year of modern Pagan practice. He explores practices for restoring a connection with sacred places in the landscape and the Eldritch powers that inhabit them, including working with spirits of place (the anima loci), interpreting the lore of trees, and recognizing magical, otherworldly, and spiritual places. He looks at divination techniques, including ostenta and signs, as well as sigils and emblems that emerge from the Wildwood. He explores geomancy and the magic of the landscape, including mountains, rivers, caves, and man-made features such as standing stones and crossroads. He shares spiritual exercises, including meditations, runic practices, and geomantic walking, and explores how to craft your own magical tools and build labyrinths, from small talismanic ones to those large enough to be danced in.
With re-enchantment of life as the goal, Pennick emphasizes the Way of the Eight Winds as a spiritual path that reconnects us to nature, brings us back to the present, and helps us see the world our ancestors venerated.
It is a fact of history that the origins of magic and medicine are rooted in the Starry Wisdom of the ancients. Their intersection is evident at numerous and varied points on the timeline. Crumbling stellar-aligned temple complexes, fragmentary Graeco-Egyptian spell books, medieval grimoires and early modern apothecary manuals all testify to the deep enmeshment of the terrestrial and celestial.
Astrology is, in essence, an occult science, whose principles underlie the vast majority of the hermetic tradition. Beyond the observation of stars and planets for omens auguring future events, the diverse celestial powers of the firmament have been drawn upon by theurgic and thaumaturgic magic. Carefully timed and engraved talismans sought to imbue earthly matter with the luminous power of planets and stars. What radiates in the heavens also gives forth its power on earth: in herbs, stones, animals, and in the affairs of humanity. Magicians have long sought to direct those emanations, to shape the below by means of the above.
Yet since the disastrous disenchantment of the Western world, above and below have drifted apart, and the fruit of their union, the Celestial Art, has withered. This enfeeblement, however, has begun to reverse. Fresh flowers and ripe fruits appear again, as translations of the fundamental texts of magic and astrology restore to each art its roots, and reveal the many points at which the two great trees embrace and entwine.
The Celestial Art gathers together twelve essays on specific aspects of astrological magic, examining essence and practical application. Among the topics of research are Vedic Astrology, Alchemy, Greek Astrological Herbalism, the Planetary Magic of the Sābians of ancient Harrān, the place of the Celestial Art in early modern British Magic, and practical planetary sorcery.
Contributions to the volume include:
Aaron Cheak, PhD Thigh of Iron, Thigh of Gold
Freedom Cole The Pulsation of the Cosmos
Austin Coppock A Feast of Starlight
Al Cummins, PhD The Azured Vault
Demetra George Thessalos of Tralles: On the Virtues of Herbs
Benjamin Dykes, PhD The Planetary Magic among the Harrānian Sābians
John Michael Greer Sources of Power in Medieval and Modern Magic
Lee Lehman, PhD The Conjunction of Electional Astrology and Magic
Jason Miller The Perfect and the Good
Eric Purdue On Identifying Presiding Daemons and Geniuses from an Astrological Chart
Daniel A. Schulke The Planetary Viscera of Witchcraft
Mallorie Vaudoise Dark Matter
Featuring some of the most important voices in contemporary astrology and magic, the book augurs, in no small part, the restoration of astrological magic, and the reconciliation of contemporary astrology with modern occult tradition.
The book is 288 pages with illustrations, printed on archival paper, with an introduction and index, and three original images by artist Joseph Uccello commissioned especially for the volume
Weight 36 oz
Dimensions 9 x 6 x 1.5 in
Publication Date
May 2018
Page Count
288
Original Price £49.00
