World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1970, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rudolph Steiner Press / New York
$65.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1970 softcover edition published by Rudolph Steiner Press, New York.
Introduction by Paul M. Allen.
All the many personalities who have immortalized themselves in alchemical research through the centuries are in- troduced in this very readable, compact presentation for today's interest in this fascinating, age-old quest in the metamorphosis of the human being.
Mr. Waite shows that the real alchemists quest was not the goal of turning base metals into gold, but rather the unfolding of the human being, the releasing and manifest- ing of the higher self. Seen in this light, alchemy is of pro- found interest and vital concern to awakened interests in development of spiritual powers and potentialities. Throughout the book are beautiful, historically significant illustrations.
G—VG copy with some general wear to extremities, tanning.
1975, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tandem / London
$65.00 - In stock -
First 1975 paperback edition.
"This book is unique in the literature of witchcraft. Many volumes record the tortures, confessions and executions of the witch trials; few examine the origin and beliefs of this remarkable subterranean cult which has survived almost unchanged through the centuries.
Michael Harrison, unrivalled in the field of historical detection, gives convincing answers to questions which other writers on witchcraft have persistently dodged—What part did Man's earliest organised religion, the Old Fertility Cult, play in the development of witchcraft? Where did the evil side of the Fertility Cult- Diabolism - evolve, and how and when did it enter Europe?
But the most important revelation in this book is the author's achievement in translating the ancient 'language of the covens', the 'gibberish' of the witch-trial records, the lost language whose identification holds the key to the very Roots of Witchcraft.
"A wide-ranging work which has achieved a remarkable breakthrough".—Yorkshire Evening Press
"...profound chronology of the cult from pre-history, through Druidism, to Salem and the present day".—Evening News
VG copy with light general wear.
1975, English
Softcover, 476 pages, 20 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Paladin / London
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1975 English softcover edition of Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion, the classic illustrated study by Swiss-American Surrealist painter, engraver, and occultist Kurt Seligmann (1900—1962).
In this fascinating study the late Kurt Seligmann, the surrealist painter, gives a history of magical ideas and manifestations in the Western world to reveal the aesthetic value of magic and its influence on creative imagination. He brings forth a vivid picture of the religio-magical beliefs of ancient, medieval and modern times. He shows the growth and development of the magical world-view in its successive stages, beginning with Mesopotamian and Persian magic, assimilating Hebrew thought, Greek philosophy and Christian theology, through the mystical concept of a unified universe with its manifold correspondences and interrelations, which finds expression in pictorial motifs and symbols, in the magical arts of astrology, divination, physiognomy, chiromancy, fortune cards and other branches of 'occult science'. Along the way he presents some colourful personalities: Nostradamus, Dr Faustus, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Trimethius, Gebelin, Mesmer, Cagliostro, Saint- Germain and others.
VG copy, general light wear.
2005, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 210 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Harvard University Press / Cambridge
$50.00 - In stock -
"Alchemy can't be science—common sense tells us as much. But perhaps common sense is not the best measure of what science is, or was. In this book, Bruce Moran looks past contemporary assumptions and prejudices to determine what alchemists were actually doing in the context of early modern science. Examining the ways alchemy and chemistry were studied and practiced between 1400 and 1700, he shows how these approaches influenced their respective practitioners' ideas about nature and shaped their inquiries into the workings of the natural world. His work sets up a dialogue between what historians have usually presented as separate spheres; here we see how alchemists and early chemists exchanged ideas and methods and in fact shared a territory between their two disciplines.
Distilling Knowledge suggests that scientific revolution may wear a different appearance in different cultural contexts. The metaphor of the Scientific Revolution, Moran argues, can be expanded to make sense of alchemy and other so-called pseudo-sciences—by including a new framework in which "process can count as an object, in which making leads to learning, and in which the messiness of conflict leads to discernment." Seen on its own terms, alchemy can stand within the bounds of demonstrative science.""
"Distilling Knowledge will prove to be the most important and valuable teaching or general-reader text on this subject available. I am often asked by students, colleagues, and interested members of the public to recommend such a 'general reader' text which could introduce them satisfactorily to alchemy and early chemistry. But there is no text that I could possibly recommend - not, that is, until this one. Thanks to Bruce Moran for writing this book and making my life easier."—Lawrence M. Principe, Johns Hopkins University
Bruce T. Moran is Professor of History, University of Nevada at Reno.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
2007, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 350 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Science History Publications / USA
$85.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition hardcover copy of Bruce T. Moran's 'Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fires'.
What lots of people called chymia in the early seventeenth century was a subject that the physician, alchemist, and schoolteacher Andreas Libavius believed needed sorting out. He called it "an art without an art." To establish what sort of thing chymia was would require rebuilding its definitions from the theoretical and practical ground up while cutting back the forest of obscure language and private meaning in which it existed.
Libavius took on the job, and in thousands of pages of toughly worded criticism ranging over alchemical, moral, medical, philosophical, and religious topics wielded a polemical blade to huge effect.
Libavius is one of the best remaining examples in the history of early modern chymistry of a figure forced to fit into descriptive historical spaces that were manifestly not his own. Beyond the book for which he is best known, the Alchemia (1597), many others (until now largely unknown and mostly ignored) provide a rich picture of the intellectual and cultural spaces within which he lived, quarrelled, and wrote. In these texts Libavius created moral arguments in defense of his own alchemically based version of chymia, used printed correspondence to collect and define the precise meanings of chemical terms and procedures, attacked and guarded views related to Scripture, clashed with physicians concerning alchemy and the preparation of chemical medicines, denounced the doctrines of Paracelsus, upheld the art of transmutation, and argued for the existence of powerful spirits and occult qualities in nature.
While philosophers must begin to understand the language and manual operations of craftsmen, artisans, Libavius proclaimed, needed to understand the causes and principles of natural philosophy.
When reason and practice combined, artisans and philosophers alike could then share a common physical and intellectual space where both played parts in making useful artefacts. The rational art involved in making things (joining philosophy with artisinal know-how) was, he declared, just as important in the labor of creating chemical compositions as in the work of controlling the health of the body (both personal and civic) and in the day to day exercise of cultivating moral virtue.
Bruce T. Moran is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Reno where he teaches the history of early science and medicine. He is also the author of Distilling Knowledge: alchemy, chemistry, and the scientific revolution (Cambridge Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1960, English
Softcover, 568 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Dover / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
"This new Dover edition, first published in 1960, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the first edition of the work which first appeared in 1924 under the title The Story of Early Chemistry."
"Add the blood of a red-haired man."—Theophilus
"To this crystal add the urine of an ass, and after 40 days you will find emeralds"—Democritus
These are quotes from two of the many alchemists whose writings are included in this book. Alchemy is one of the oldest arts practiced by man, and to uncover its history is to learn of extraordinarily strange beliefs and practices. But alchemy had a definite effect on the advance of thought and theory in true chemistry, and the histories of the two fields are often intermingled. In this volume, Professor Stillman has applied a lifetime of knowledge to the problem of developing these histories authoritatively, fully, and readably.
The author, head of the Chemistry Department at Stanford from 1891 to 1917, constructed his book from original Greek, Latin, German, and French texts-solid, factual material that you would have to go to dozens of different books to find elsewhere. He quotes liberally from the writers of all periods; you read the alchemists' own words about the transmutation of metals, Boyle's "Skeptical Chymist," Newton's ideas about the force of chemical affinity, Lavoisier's last letter before he was guillotined, and many other famous documents. You get concise studies of the lives and works of every leading figure in alchemy and early chemistry (through Lavoisier and the birth of modern chemistry).
The book is written with impeccable scholarship, but it is also an exciting story that will delight and inform both the general reader and the chemist. Combining science, art, and mysticism, it contains some of the greatest achievements of science as well as instances of superstition, credulity, and imagination unique in man's history.
Average—Good copy with discolouration/tanning/marking to covers/spine edges, previous owner's name penned to top of title page, some tape marks and tears patches to covers. Good interior.
2004, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 216 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Ashgate / Hampshire
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 2004 hardcover edition.
"Feces, urine, flatus, phlegm, vomitus - unlike ourselves, our most educated forebears did not disdain these functions, and, further, they employed scatological references in all manner of works. This collection of essays was provoked by what its editors considered to be a curious lacuna: the relative academic neglect of the copious and ubiquitous scatological rhetoric of Early Modern Europe, here broadly defined as the representation of the process and product of elimination of the body's waste products. The contributors to this volume examine the many forms and functions of scatology as literary and artistic trope, and reconsider this last taboo in the context of Early Modern European expression. They address unflinchingly both the objective reality of the scatological as part and parcel of material culture - inescapably a much larger part, a much heavier parcel then than now - and the subjective experience of that reality among contemporaries."
VG—NF copy.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 2 includes photographic features by Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Yoshihiro Tatsuki, the artwork of French decorator of department store mannequins and surrealist Sunday painter Clovis Trouille, Venus in Furs erotic photo shoot by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yokoo Tadanori, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alberto Martini, Félicien Rops, Rene Magritte, an incredible feature "Machine for Murder" with art by Hiroshi Nakamura, Tomi Ungerer, Koichi Tanigawa, Osamu Tsukasa, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marcel Duchamp, Seiichi Horiuchi, and others, an article on the erotica of Ukiyo-e with a fold-out colour three panel poster, the fully illustrated museum supplement on Demonology by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history, texts by Apollinaire, Burroughs, Mutsuo Takahashi, articles on laws pertaining to homosexuality, Kama Sutra, shoe fetishism, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 3 (with cover by Bronzino, 1554) includes full-colour photographic feature by Kishin Shinoyama ("Virgin In Uniform" featuring models/artists Angela Asaoka, Akaji Maro, Yoko Ashikawa) and beautiful Shomei Tomatsu photo feature ("Scoptophilia"), the artwork of the great French cross-dressing painter-photographer Pierre Molinier, texts by Jirō Kawamura, Yumiko Kurahashi, Taruho Inagaki ("Memories of Hemorrhoids or "New Tsurezuregusa"), Akiyuki Nosaka ("Dear Penis, Goodbye"), Minoru Minamihara ("The Mystic Thought of Love in the Case of Jakob Böhme"), Takiji Kobayashi, The Fictitious Garden of Babylon by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Tsunekazu Murata ("Witch's Ax : Concerning Heresy in Medieval Europe"), translation of Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" illustrated by Franco Gentilini, recent research on homosexuality by film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, Kama Sutra, more Gay (Danshoku) Japanese Theater history, Marquise de Blancvilliers by Koji Nakata, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.
2024, English
Hardcover, 480 pages, 29.7 x 20 cm
Published by
Korm Plastics / Netherlands
$89.00 - In stock -
Edited and assembled by Kristian Olsson. Almost an encyclopedia of esoteric knowledge, dark music and arts and much beyond! Book-format publication dealing with all kinds of apocalyptic culture, anarchic rants, archaic sorcery, damned poets, esoterrorist tactics, forbidden knowledge, libertine lusts, necromantic collages, oneiric musings, outlaw occultism, perversion, sinister arts and visual expansionism. Giftnålen is the foul arts journal for death-obsessed brutes and society’s outcasts. Revel in amoral excesses through 480 pages. Sit back and enjoy reading while this world burns. A total derangement of the senses. Heavily illustrated with tons of exclusive and rarely seen material.
Harking back to the days of the late 1980s-early 1990s in terms of diversity of content, drawing inspiration from underground books & publications such as Amok, Esoterra, Exit, Force Mental, Pandemonium, Rapid Eye Movement, Svarta Fanor and so on. Giftnålen takes it next level and further into unknown territory.
Including passages, large or brief, dealing with:
Sigvard Nilsson Thurneman & Den Magiska Cirkeln, ”Thurneman & Liemannen from the perspective of a LHP initiate” by Johannes Kvarnbrink, “The Vultures of Sala”, Georges Bataille & the Acephale society, ”Death and Night and Blood: Yukio Mishima & the Asceticism of Japanese Death-Aesthetics”, ”Hatets sånger” by Leon Larsson, ”Hyoscyamus Nigredo: From Silver Into Lead”, “Manhunter: Thurneman – Occultist & Serial Killer” by Wulvaricht, ”The Devil in Delgada: The Strange & Unusual Lives of Johnny Bode & Tom Zacharias”, ”11.000 Days in Säter: Från Dårhus till Bårhus”, ”The Sense of Bel-Longing” poem by Julian Theurgen, “The Thurneman improvisations” by Sten Röse, “Sigvards sterbthaler”, ”The Triumph of Death” by Alberto Caraco, SalaSatanskin, Judas Ekholm, ”The Poisonous Needle: Esoterrorist Credo of the Sinister Outlaw”, ”Salaligan: Tools of the Trade”, melancholia, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan over a hundred years, De Strigmagarum Daemonique Mirandis, ”The Curse of the Third Eye”, ”Fem-femmornas fotbollsmatch: criminal all-stars Thurneman, Salaligan & Johnny Bode teaming up against the screws at the Långholmen prison”, Tillbergamördaren, Renzo Novatore, ”Teurgisk Terrortantra: Photos by MalFiore di Fiele & Frida Ghiozzi (Omega Kunst)”, ”The Poetic Tradition of Swedish Melancholia: A Portrayal of Dismal & Unfortunate Death-seekers in the ruinous Land of the Midnight Sun”, Nattmaran, ”Lasse Lucidor – the Unfortunate: Rusets och ruelsens skald”, Erik Johan Stagnelius – Dweller in the Arms of Putrefaction, Plato, Dante, ”Iatromantis: To Die Before You Die”, Meister Eckhart, Parmenides, the Upanishads, Djävulsbrand, Styggen, underworldly descent, Peter Kingsley, ”Avfyrning!”, Ecstasies, The Death Principle, ”Henbane: Saturnalia Poison” & ”A Woodland Sitting” by Sentinessence, ”The Linkola Legacy”, Apocalypse Culture, Deep Ecology, Oscar Wilde, Max Stirner, Ingmar Bergman, Albert Camus, ”Killing Cults & Their Slaves” reflections by Charles Manson (exclusive text submitted by ATWA/ATWAR), “Red & Blue”, ”Ashen Synchronicities”, haruspex of criminal gnosis, ”Meeting with a Remarkable Man: An Interview with Nikolas Schreck”, Spiritual Warriorhood in the Age of Dissolution, Initiatory Mysteries in the Temples of Karnak, The Faustian Quest, Charlatans of Occulture, Vama Marg, Esoteric Tantric Buddhism, The Three Poisons, Solitude & Subtraction, The Process Church of Final Judgement, Scientology, ”Counter-Culture”: A Fly Entangled in the Webs of Maya, luddite poetry, The Manson-File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman, Eros & Thanatos, Storms of Sethian Liberation, ”Abraxas & His Mysteries: The Forgotten God & the Hidden Nature of Reality”, Abraxas in Hesse’s ”Demian”, extract from ”Opposition is True Friendship” – Karl NE on Abrades, D.H. Lawrence ”Taos”, The Abraxas Foundation, Michael Moynihan, Boyd Rice, ”Monarchie Infernale: The Occult History of the Royal Court and the Aristocratic Elite in Sweden during the Gustavian Era”, ”Of Blind Men & Occult Forces”, Blutleuchte, “The Hearts of Kings” Ajna Offensive, Descent magazine, Lightbringers of the North, Gustav Biörnram – necromancer of the Swedish king Gustav III, The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, ”Nekromantiens: Riter vid Sankt Johannes Kyrkogård”, Andrew Chumbley, Algolagonia, The Malleus Maleficarum: Europe Overshadowed by the Hammer of Witches, The Gates of Hell Opening in Copenhagen, La sorcière, ”Method for Achieving Communication with Spirits” translated notes from the necromantic conjurations of Gustaf Björnram, ”Carl August Ehrensvärd & Den Esoteriska Kretsen: Eleusinian Mysteries & Orphic Hymns in the Mythological Labyrinth”, Gottfried Benn, ”The Mystical Signatures of Adolph Falkenberg”, Gustaf Adolf Reutersholm, Den Esoteriska Kretsen, Sophia Perennis, René Guenon, J.W. von Goethe, Oswald Spengler, ”Death to those who seek false comforts” by Erica Frevel, ”In the Midst of Life, We are in Death”, ”Riddles of the Sevenfold Way”, Anton Long, Algernon Blackwood, ”The Man Whom the Trees Loved”, Richard Moult, Michael Morthwork,”The Ordeal of the Abyss: Interview with Christos Beest”, ”From Ancient Gods into New Devils”, Wotan, self-sacrificial offerings, burial traditions, black magic rites, C.S. Lewis, Guido Cernonetti, Man Ray, BDSM, Aldous Huxley, Octave Mirabeau, Ambrose Bierce, G.I. Gurdjieff, King Gustav III, ”Ernst Wagner against the degenerate world”, ”Liber Nigri Peregrinationis: The Black Pilgrimage to Chorazaim & the Crossing of the Abyss”, Jack Parsons, Marjorie Cameron, L. Ron Hubbard, Leonora Carrington, the scholia of Nicolas Gomez Davila, Arcana Europa, Ignus Fatuus: Irrlicht, The Lunar Accomplice”, Shintoism, ”Mount Analogue & the Dark Night of the Soul”, René Daumal, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, G.I. Gurdjieff, Saint John of the Cross, ”Behold… the Blood of the Moon”, Mircea Eliade, ”Det Sjunde Inseglet: Procession Scene”, ”H.P. Lovecraft – A Comrade of the Wolves & Rider of Nightmares”, Alain Robbe-Grillet, ”Mysterium Tremendum: An interview with Carl Nordblom”, “Det skälvande mysteriet”, infernal pacts, criminal gangs of Sweden, secret brotherhoods, the UR Group, Ezra Pound, August Strindberg, from “On the Heights of Despair” by Emil Cioran, self-transformation, Hanon-Tramp, Henri Fuseli, ”The Dawning New Days of Defeat”, Hagakure, ”Mishima on Death in the Modern Age”, Ba Ra Ken: Ordeal of Roses, Eino Leino, Ulrike Meinhof, Holger Meins, “Bo Ignatius Cavefors landstigen på Dödens ö”, Alexandra David-Neel, Janne Bergquist: an open cancerous wound on the body of society, Autonomisk Manual, Kenneth Anger, Sir Augen Goosens, the Anarchs-Futurist Manifesto, Ernest Coeurderoy, the Kindred of the Kibbo Gift, Antonin Artaud, Marquis de Sade, Set Teitan, Paul Verlaine, Guido von List, The Rise and Fall of Hanussen – Occult superstar of the Interwar Period: Charlatan from the Finee Salons of Berlin to Feeding a Family of Badgers, Zos Kia, Paul Wegener, ritual bloodletting, Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley, Christos Beest, Carl von Linné, Boyd Rice, Nikanor Teratologen, Melek Taus of Holland, Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Mensur scarification – A Rite of Passage in 20th century Europe, yoga practices with Che Guevara, ”Frank Braun: Devil hunter or doppelgänger?”, Blood mysticism & Teutonic Vampirism, Viktor Rydberg on the Mandragora, ”The Curse of Nosferatu: Fraternitas Saturni’s Master Pacitus & Prana Film”, Ernst Jünger ”Sicilian Letter to the Man in the Moon”, ”Female nomad decadents of the Ferkel Circle”, Frida Uhl, F.T. Marinetti, ”Blast of the Vortex Campaign: Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats & Wyndham Lewis”, Vienna Actionism, Odd Nerdrum, Andreas Baader, Night of Death in Stammheim, Liesmac of the Deverills, Ola Hansson: Pariah among outcasts, Edward Munch, Martin Heidegger, Jean Genet, insurrection, suicide as an ultimate revolutionary act, Peryt Schou & the Awakening of the Logos, Arte de Maleficium: Works of Art as Regicide, Gustav Meyrink, Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald – Alraune des Jugendstils, Stefan Eggier, Mahlon Blair, Karl Hans Strobl, Degenerate Germany: Perversion for Profit in the Weimar Republic, Human Sacrifice at the Magic Island Haiti, ”William Buehler Seabrook: Transcending All Transgressions”, sadomasochism, tantric masters, ”Three Tongue-less Mouths” by C. Nordblom, Maya Deren, ”The Sacred as Transgression: Roger Callois”, ”Lupercalia to Liberalia: An Extract from The Antichrist Phallus” & ”The Rustic Rite of the Wolf-Owl” by Wyrd Isle Collective, ”Grave-robbing in the Towers of Silence with Sven Hedin”, “Disciples of ‘Bone: The Dispossessed Sons of Albion”, Citipati and Kangling, ”The Minstrels of Misrule”, the Green Man, ”Mythos of Masked Gods and Mummering Men”, Kenneth Grant, Styggelser: Black Metal Abominations, Externsteine, J.G. Ballard, The Panic Movement, the Promethean flame, gnosticism, Roland Topor, Fernando Arrabal, William Ouidhuis’ Katabol, Abefko Nord: the volcanic island Alnö, Saint Antonius, the werewolf in Scandinavian mythology, Perun, the Cult of Dionysos, ”Apocalyptic Collisions of Tradition & Modernity in a Perpetual Dark Age”, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic, Foucault, Fulcanelli & the Mystery of the Cathedrals, ”Play the King for a day…”, ”Rex Nemorensis: The Killing of the Divine King”, The Golden Bough, The Cultural Terrorist Manifesto, Sturm und Drang, tjyvheder, prison life, mythopoetic imagination, Carl Larsson’s “Midvinterblot”, Gösta Werner’s “Midvinterblot”, the cult of Frö, Nordic death cults, Lucia – Progenitress of Demonic Entities, álfar, ”Narcocultura Necromanteia: Criminal Devotees among the Cult of the Holy Death”, Liber Falxifer, Necrosophy, Santa Muerte / San La Muerte, Nyhamnskifte, In the Hoofprints of the Nordic Devil, The Thirteenth School and the Black Priests of Satan, Carl Gustav Jung & the Shadow, Herr Ola i Trång & Gammal-Sjul, Kyrkogrim, Kvick i jord, Created from the Shadow of God, Svartkonst: Nordic necromancy & nigromancy, Hultkläppen, the Hand of Glory, Tjuvljus, The Spiritus Familiaris & the Arcanum of Human Blood, do-it-yourself instructions for the making of ”bjäran”, Paracelsus, ”Den Ryktbara Trollpackan Kapten Elins förmenta resor till Blåkulla och Bekantskap med Djefwulen”, Hyltén-Cavallius ”Wärend och Wirdarne”, småfiffel, The Arcane and Forbidden Wisdom of Nordic Sorcery found in the Scandinavian books of the black arts, rare archive photographs of Nordic sorcerers and witches, Sanguine Vociferation, Ichor, Aztec blood rituals, Vampirism at the Execution site, Red & White: Shakti & Shiva, menstrual blood magic, Significance of “Red / Blue / Purple Wings” to the 1%er, Mandragora Officinarum, “Stä blod”, Aristocracy of the Soul: the warrior poet Gabrielle D’Annunzio, the anarchic republic of Fiume, Kapala & Damaru, ”Pierre Drieu la Rochelle: Drawn Towards Death Like a Moth Towards the Flame”, cyanide, Chhinnamasta: Acephalic Goddess of Paradoxes, Tantric graveyard meditations, ”Åderlåtning & blodmat”, Doktor Mabuse, Isidore Lucien Ducasse, Macabre Ritual Feasts of Freemasonry, Consanguinity, Offerings to the Dark Gods, the Necromancy of Erichto, Nikanor Teratologen: Dissekerande definitioner, Frithjof Schoun, female domination, Hermann Hesse, Dalai Lama, Miguel Serrano, Mithraic mysteries, Apolitea, ”Saint Sebastian: The Twice Martyred”, The Pagan Ways of emperor Diocletian, Aum: Suck on Sarin, The Electronic Revolution, Word Virus, cultural terrorism, artificial intelligence, psychoactive plants, Cimicidäemones: Bedbugs making your deathbed, ångerstål, vådastål, Nordic Sorcery, Demons of the Flesh, Gamen, opium dreams, godetia, demonomania, simulacra, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Ned Ludd, MK Ultra, Jünger’s “Psykonauterna” & “Visit to Godenholm”, Executioners swords towards Externsteine, Herman Wirth, Pervitin, perversion, murder weapons & tools of self-wasters as magic objects, borrowing bones from the dead, the Witch of Endor, “Omne malum ab Aquilone: All Malice travels with the North Wind”, The Wild Hunt, the Nine Galder songs, Gullveig / Heid, Canon episcopi, The Death-Horse of Horatius, Donar’s Oak, Ulvhednar, varg-i-veum, Vánagandr, LSD-25, Psilocybe Semilanceata, instruments made from human remains, Nattmannen, rackaren, The Corpse Hounds of Hel, Hector Meinhof, brewing beer on a severed human hand, the secret Vehmic courts, Barcode or Branding? Welcome idiot to the Grave New World!, Unfolding the Blood-Eagle, Metaphysics of Death, Mjältsjuka: The Black Bile, Descent into Hades, Ancient Greece, Man is a God in Ruins, leaderless resistance, Aghori devotees, Akeldama: Field of Blood, Pauper’s Graves Bonehouses as a Sanctum for Equality in Death, ”The Infernal Trinity: Reinterpreting the Sinister Imagery of the Prior Leschman Chapel” by Christopher Walton, ”Hornet och smörjan: Early Use of Psychedelic Drugs & Poisonous Plants among Witches & Sorcerers in Europe”, derangement of the senses, pitchfork-riders, fence-riders, Nordic shamanism, sabbatic craft, sublimation through filth, sacred prostitution, Jukka Siikala, dead rats, the path of Kaulamarga, ”Ecstatic Inferno Visions & Thanatomaniac Excesses: South-East Asia as seen through the feverish glass-eye of an exile-European death-seeker / The Documentary Photography of Stephen Bessac”, Hunting Asia, Deathlust, Maison Close, mondo movies, Pakito Bolino, Le Dernier Cri, Narok, Thai Buddhist hell theme parks, Asubha – meditations on the foulness of the human body, MS13, mortuary cults, Nicholas Roerich, Agni Yoga, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Tibet, Bodhisattva Maitreya, Bolshevik supersoldiers perfected through Kalachakra Tantra, ”Onwards to Shambhala: The Path towards merging with the divine fire”, the Occult Roots of Soviet, OGPU Special Department – Institute for Brain Studies & Psychic Activities, hypnosis, Barchenko, Gleb Bokii, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, the Bogd Khan, Kangchendzönga, Corto Maltese, Caucasian Ovcharkas feasting on corpses, Sven Hedin, ”Beast, Men & Gods” by Ferdinand Ossendowski, the Spear of Destiny, the Cult of the Leader & Soviet Godhood, Arctic Hysteria, pyramids near the Lake Seidozero, Yakov Blumkin, the Ancestral Research Bureau, Vril force, Odic Energy, Olaus Rudbeck & his Atlantean Uppsala, ”Among Fiddlers, Outcasts & Outlaws in Helsingia”, Karl-Max Fredrikson, the eternal return, Lim-Johan, horrid Hälsingland, Miguel Serrano, Nils-Fredrik Åkerberg & Delsboligan: ”an evil beast capable of the most heinous cruelty”, Kniven, ”Discovering a Runic Devil-Pact from the 19th Century”, the myth of Hårga, Raggare, ”Hultkläppen: A Menschenfeind in the Devil’s Service”, Pelle Schenell, Antinomian scatological tricksters – the two living legends known as ”Bajsmannen”, slagrutemän, Starsk-Pelle, Troll-Per och dömullen, det brutala Gnarp, the Nordic Yule Goat, ”Kali: The Black Mother” by Karl NE, The Art of David S. Herrerías, Karl Nachzehrer Eng – interview extract, Anckarström & the assassination of king Gustav III, freemasonry, spirit seers, Hertig Karl, Hypnosmord, ”Bones in the Wall: Enriqueta Martí – Vampire of Barcelona” by Martin Locker / Perennial Pyrenees, ”Hanns Heinz Ewers – Rider of the Germanic Nightside”, catacomb spectres, ”A Thousand Faces of Fear”, Psychonauts, smoking 77 cigarettes a day, ”The Conqueror Worm or Carrion for Worm?”, Intoxication and Art, Ewers & Alraune in Sundvall, Kristoffer Nilsson, Per Faxneld, Pan-Germanic Panic in India, Thugees, Left-Hand Path initiation, ”Bo Ignatius Cavefors – Landstigen på Dödens Ö”, Carsten Regild, Cavefors Förlag, Soma, Grymhetens Teater Dekadens, Arnold Böcklin, Infinity Land Press, Socialistische Patienten Kollektiv, Kommando Holger Meins, Odd Nerdrum, Caravaggio, the state-sanctioned murder of the Baader-Meinhof gang and their martyr hood, Christ in Gethsemane, J.H. Schönheit versus Karl XII, Oppressive Liberation Spirit – Rest in Power Sakevi Yokoyama, Self-Mortification, Ivan Agueli, Edward Munch, Arthur Moeller van der Bruck, Aleister Crowley, Thelema, Rites of the Dreamweapon: The Tremor Rite, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, Spirit Catcher, Prussian anarchists, ”Plutarchs of the Pandemic: Lords of All Fevers & Plague”, Walpurgisnacht, Ira Cohen, Brain Damage: Sorcery as an Art, PH Kerin, Marcus Hinze, Gilles de Rats, human sacrifice, Robert Nicholas Taylor, Haiti: The Magic Island, ”Chat Control”, Quimbanda, Exu, Jesus Malverde, Svartkonstböcker, skaldic mead, the Cathars, ”The Troubadour Turned Traitor: Ezra Pound”, Bhagavata Purana, Water as a Passageway into the Underworld, Sejd Laughter, the End of the World in Nordic mythology, Nastrand – the Corpse-Shore, sacred fountains, the Great Reset, hematophilia, blood play, Günter Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, guerilla tactics, The Key of Alocer, Rökkr, Cum Ingenti Priapo, pagan rites of fertility, ”The Descent of Odin” by Thomas Gray, The Galder of Death: Vallgalder, The Tree of Wyrd, ”The Nithing Pole”, land spirits, the sacrificial groves of the dead, George Sylvester Viereck, Nikola Tesla, Unamerican activities, European gothic horror literature, social credit, Daemonium Aeternus, Euronymous, Sepulchral Noise, Svarta Cirkeln, grave desecrations, death magick, Wandervögel, Emanuel Swedenborg, Julereien, De Dödas Julotta, ”Lycanthropia” by Adam Parfrey, the Equinox Event, ”On Sacrifice” by Tancredi Valeri, ”The Last Words of Louis Lingg”, Venus in Furs, Sumerian kingship, Against Control, Techniques for Cutting Up the Leviathan of Modernity, Reinventing Urban Sorcery, Subverting and Disrupting the NWO Control Mechanisms, heathen hit squads, mental illness, post-war eugenics in the Swedish demonocratic state, Trevor Brown’s Antichrist, Arturo Reghini, neo-Pythagoreanism, Bror Gadelius, complete disorientation of the senses, dissidents, heretics, deviated carnal encounters, Apotropeism, antinomianism, Guido Crepax, Alfred Kubin, Valerie der Phantasten, väggmadammer, European folklore, ”Living in the Reign of Phantoms… Saluting Death in a Rain of Bullets”, Iconoclasta, Nihilismo, Propagation by the Deed, Side Real Press, Black Widow’s Web Erotica, Michel Houllebecq, desert wanderers, Arthur Machen, Dragon Rouge, active imagination, the Revolutionary Cathechism, Devil Worship, necromantic rites, suicidal pacts, a world making its last death twitches….
SOUND:
Metgumbnerbone, The New Blockaders, Ward Phillips, Vivenza, G.I.S.M, Criminal Party, Grim, White Hospital, Basilisk, John Duncan, Paul Hurst, Beast 666 Tapes, Linekraft, LSD (Japan), John Murphy, Lily Vice & Lust Vessel, Nord, Ultra, Art Into Life, Ramleh, Sir Ashleigh Grove, Organum, Con-Dom, The Grey Wolves, Opera for Infantry, Death in June, Allerseelen, Zero Kama, Korpses Catatonic, Cthulhu Records, Masstishaddhu, SPK, Citipati, Peter Zincken, Sedayne, Nåstrond, Thurnemans, Salaligan, Klinik (the Swedish), Hyoscyamus Niger, Amebix, Hijokaidan, Irkallian Oracle, D-C Pöbeln, Brighter Death Now, Spacemen 3, Agitation Free, Mortuus, Genocide Organ, Johnny Bode, Lapp-Lisa, Tom Zacharias, Blood Axis, Blood Ov Thee Christ, Alfarmania, Masami Akita & ZSF Produkt, Tony Conrad, Tone Generator, RJF, Joy Division, Rune Lindblad, Åke Hodell, Geto Boys, Etat Brut, The Curfew Recordings, Tower Transmissions, Come Organisation, H.N.A.S, Mixed Band Philanthropist, Bladder Flask, Leif Thuresson, Galme, Asmus Tietchens, Noisextra radio show, Putrefier / Birthbiter, Die Form / Bain Total, Club Moral, Iannis Xenakis, Terry Riley, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Dadarotator, Kickback, Survival Unit, Bizarre Uproar, Striktlickers, United Dairies, Brainticket, AQM, S.K.V. Null, Premature Ejaculation, Aghast, The Folding Staircase, Monte Cazazza, Aussaat, Totalitär, Beast 666 Tapes / Hate Song, Clandestine Blaze, Vice Squad, Night Wolf, O’Nancy in French, Blod (Gnarp), Lille Roger, Missbrukarna, Samla Mammas Manna, Cromagnon, Taj Mahal Travellers, CM von Hausswolff, Leif Elggren, Coil, Citipati, Martin Bladh, Perdition Hearse, the true Mayhem, Blue Öyster Cult, Blasphemy, Sodom, Treriksröset, Proiekt Hat, Taint, Slave State, Ernte, Psychic TV, Monte Cazazza, Angus MacLise: Dreamweapon - The Ascension of Saint Angus of Kathmandu, LaMonte Young , Marian Zazeela, John Cale, The Dream Synicate / The Theatre of Eternal Music, Tony Conrad, The Velvet Underground, Corpse Molestation, Bestial Warlust, Destroyer 666, Black Hole, Mortuary Drape, Paul Chain, the Sodality, The Third Ear Band, Fata Morgana, Master’s Hammer, Hiram Gordon Wells, Vagina Dentata Organ, Unkommuniti / Black Dwarf, R&D Group 28, Throbbing Gristle, Perdition Hearse and others.
CINEMA:
Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, Invocation of My Demon-Brother, Alraune, The Student from Prague, The Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Blood On Satan’s Claw, The Wicker Man, Roger Corman’s E.A. Poe adaptions, Eyes of Fire / Cry Blue Sky, Born of Fire, Wickedness of the Wyrdful Ways: Obscure Treasures from the Catacombs of Occult & Otherworldly Cinema, ”The Devil’s Devilry” (Ken Russell’s the Devils), Le Feu Follet, ”Folk horror – a Eurocentric phenomena?”, ”This ain’t the summer of love” – Altamont & Performance, Incubus, Right Brain Video, Junk Films – the Collected Short Shockumentaries of Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, …hanno cambiato faccia, Baba Yaga, Don’t Deliver Us From Evil, Lost Paradise: Riding Habit Harakiri, Faccia di Spia, Sukkubus – the Devil in the Body, psycho-sexual arthouse cinema of oneiromantic libertines, La sorcière, Häxan – Witchcraft through the Ages, Trans-Europe-Express, Belladonna of Sadness, L’Eden et après, Glissements progresses du plaisir, Louis Mallet, Det Sjunde Inseglet, Ingmar Bergman, Survival Research Laboratories, The Other Side of Madness, Hagazussa, A Field in England, Kill List, High Rise, Åsa-Nisse, Viva La Muerte!, Cinema as Resistance in Fascist Spain, I will walk like a crazy horse, Tombs of the Blind Dead, Who Can Kill a Child?, Last House on Dead End Street, David Cronenberg, Brion Gysin, Bizarre / The Secrets of Sex, Anthony Balch, Red Baron Entertainment, Jack Smith, Stan Brakhage, Coto de Caza, Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs, Freaks, Towers Open Fire, The Bell from Hell, The Killer of Dolls, Murder in a Blue World, Eloy de la Iglesia, Cannibal Man, the Glass Ceiling, Animales Racionales, Themroc, Beast in the Heat, Leon Klimovsky, Paul Naschy, Night of the Walpurgis, The Werewolf & the Yeti, The People Who Own the Dark, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Rebellion of the Dead, Abefko Nord, Hunchback of the Morgue, Faust: eine Deutsche Volkssage, Night of the Sorcerers, ”Shape-shifters & the Silver Globe”, Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittenbach, Andrzej Zulawski, Diabel, Possession, On the Silver Globe, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Black Sabbath, Viy, Tilbury, Rat Savior, Svesto Mesto, the New Wave of Czechoslovak Cinema, True Gore, The Cremator / Spalova mrtvol, Lars von Trier’s Riget, Valerie & Her Week of Wonders, Kurototage: Black Lizard, Afraid to Die, Móju: Blind Beast, Femina Ridens, The Rite of Love and Death, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, The Annunciation, How to Become a God, Dark Shadows, Blade Runner, Night Tide, Invocation of My Demon’s Brother, In Satan’s Name, Konstantin Sergeyevich Lopushansky, Letters from a Dead Man, Visitor to a Museum, Andrej Tarkovskij, Stalker, History of the Arkanar Massacre, Satanico Pandemonium, Alucarda, The Mansion of Madness, Lunacy, El Topo, Fando y Lis, Legend of the Witches, The Judgement of Albion, Nosferatu – eine Symphonie des Grauens, ”Arcane Incantations: The Alchemic Cinema of Pupi Avati”, Zeder, The House with the Laughing Windows, Saló – The 120 Days of Sodom, L’arcano incantatore, Arcana, Luis Buñuel, Robin Redbreast, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, True Gore, Penda’s Fen, Scum, Made in Britain, Apocalypse Now, Gösta Werner’s Midvinterblot and more beyond what the eye perceives.
The overwhelming interest in the book has resulted in the first hundred copies selling out within less than a day.
1979, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
John Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$65.00 - Out of stock
Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant 1972 study of human evil and the ritual role of sacrifice. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.
"His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy."
René Noël Théophile Girard (1923—2015) was a French polymath, historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains.
1959, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 215 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rider / UK
$290.00 - In stock -
Very rare first 1959 hardcover edition, first printing of Eliphas Levi's grimoire masterwork, The Key of the Mysteries, translated from the French, with an introduction and notes by Aleister Crowley, published by Rider, UK.
Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a sage, poet and author of over twenty esoteric books. He began writing at 22 years of age and was imprisoned twice for the critical nature of his work. Eliphas Levi was steeped in the Western occult tradition and a master of the Rosicrucian interpretation of the Qabalah, which forms the basis of magic as practiced in the West today. The "Key of the Mysteries" represents the culmination of Levi's thoughts and is written with subtle and delicate irony. It reveals the mysteries of religion and the secrets of the Qabalah, providing a sketch of the prophetic theology of numbers. The mysteries of nature, such as spiritualism and fluidic phantoms, are explored. Magical mysteries, the Theory of the Will with its 22 axioms are divulged. And finally it offers "the great practical secrets." The true greatness of this work, however, lies in its ability to place occult thought firmly in Western religious traditions. For Levi, the study of the occult was the study of a divine science, the mathematics of God.
Éliphas Lévi Zahed (1810—1875), born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a French esotericist, poet, and writer. Initially pursuing an ecclesiastical career in the Catholic Church, he abandoned the priesthood in his mid-twenties and became a ceremonial magician. At the age of 40, he began professing knowledge of the occult.
Good—Very Good copy in Good seldom preserved dust jacket. DJ has general wear and tear to extremities, chipping. Book G—VG with foxing to end papers/block edges, previous owner's name, light tanning. Preserved in mylar wrap.
1979, English
Softcover, 294 pages + fold-out, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Richard Roberts / San Anselmo
$500.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare, privately published first 1979 edition, first printing of this important study of the tarot. Tarot Revelations is an analysis of the mysterious philosophy in the ancient cards that became modern playing cards. Citing Dante, C.G.Jung, and early Gnostics and alchemists, Campbell and Roberts reveal a path that has spiritual meaning for everyone. Writing in collaboration with Richard Roberts, Joseph Campbell stated, "We have come to revelations of a grandiose poetic vision of Universal Man that has been for centuries the inspiration of saints and sinners, sages and fools, in kaleidoscopic transformations." According to Richard Roberts, "In the 22 cards comprising the Major Arcana, we have a genuine document of the soul's initiation into higher consciousness. As such the Major Arcana may be interpreted as a Western Book of the Dead."
Introduction by Colin Wilson: "For two centuries now, the human spirit has been in revolt against the world of the Gradgrinds, and their obsession with "facts, hard facts." The Romanticism of the 19th century was one long shout of defiance. The Romantics exaggerated the problem out of weakness and a sense of vulnerability. And people like Dick Roberts and Joseph Campbell are restoring it to perspective, and bringing about a reconciliation that is based on insight and strength. If they succeed, the intellectual perspective of the 21st century could be more exciting than anything we can imagine.—Colin Wilson
Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who focused primarily on comparative mythology and religion. His concept of monomyth, in which all mythic narratives are variations on the same story, is far-reaching, and George Lucas has noted the influence of Campbell's work on the Star Wars saga. He and tarot scholar Richard Roberts collaborated on this work, praised by Theodore Rozak as "the most serious study of the Tarot I have seen" (front wrapper).
Illustrations throuhgout the text, folding colour plate of the Major Arcana at rear.
Very Good—NF likely unread copy with no spine creasing, light wear to corner extremities, price sticker remnants to lower back cover. Beautifully preserved copy of this very first rare edition. More common, though now also rare, editions were issued in 1982 and 1987 under "Vernal Equinox" imprint.
1968 / 1969, Japanese / French
4 Vols., softcover, approx. 1000 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$350.00 - Out of stock
Complete 4 issue run of Le Sang Et La Rose — a masterpiece of the Japanese underground! Opening with Kishin Shinoyama's photographic portraits of Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian and onward through one thousand pages exploring the outer limits of subversive human potential!
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!) The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
All Good—VG copies with general wear and age.
Vol 1 with bumping and open chip to top of spine.
1993, Japanese
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
"Mannequin" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 1993, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of the mannequin from fashion apparatus to fetish object, automatons to living dolls, including a panoramic photographic history of mannequins, a photo feature of French photographer Bernard Faucon's boy mannequin collection, a huge illustrated article on famous Japanese costume, stage and exhibition designer, and Issey Miyake collaborator Tomio Mohri, the wax anatomical models of dissected corpses by Clemente Michelangelo Susini of Florence (1754–1814) shot by Ryuji Miyamoto, Czech animator Jirí Barta's Klub odlozenych, Japanese model and actress Sayoko Yamaguchi, the living dolls of the Japanese theatre, medical mannequins, crash-test dummies, icons, "Doll Love" and erotic dolls, plus lots more and a lot more Bernard Faucon!
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 277 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Syracuse University Press / Syracuse
$60.00 - In stock -
Edited by Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella
Originally published in Paris in French in 1610, Ferrand's treatise is an example of erotomania in the late Renaissance.
"An exemplary critical edition of Ferrand's treatise of 1610 on erotic melancholy, preceded by an introductory essay (of nine chapters) in which they examine the place of erotic ideas in Renaissance culture.... A compendium of 2,000 years of ideas about love."—The Times Literary Supplement
"Ferrand was one of the last great encyclopedists, and we owe a huge debt to the two distinguished scholars who have undertaken the immense task of translating and editing his engaging treatise.... A unique summa on erotomania and a work destined to become a classic."—English Studies in Canada
"An impressive tome that marks indeed a milestone in our knowledge of sexology."—Renaissancee Quarterly
Very Good of the first 1990 English translation edition.
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 24 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Allen Lane / UK
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1971 English hardcover edition of Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion, the classic illustrated study by Swiss-American Surrealist painter, engraver, and occultist Kurt Seligmann (1900—1962).
In this fascinating study the late Kurt Seligmann, the surrealist painter, gives a history of magical ideas and manifestations in the Western world to reveal the aesthetic value of magic and its influence on creative imagination. He brings forth a vivid picture of the religio-magical beliefs of ancient, medieval and modern times. He shows the growth and development of the magical world-view in its successive stages, beginning with Mesopotamian and Persian magic, assimilating Hebrew thought, Greek philosophy and Christian theology, through the mystical concept of a unified universe with its manifold correspondences and interrelations, which finds expression in pictorial motifs and symbols, in the magical arts of astrology, divination, physiognomy, chiromancy, fortune cards and other branches of 'occult science'. Along the way he presents some colourful personalities: Nostradamus, Dr Faustus, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Trimethius, Gebelin, Mesmer, Cagliostro, Saint- Germain and others.
Fine copy in Near Fine—Very Good dust jacket.
1982/1992, Japanese
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
"Corpse" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, first published in 1982, then re-printed in 1992, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of death and the dead in the arts, literature, occultism, ancient sciences, philosophy, mythology, poetry, film, crime, and much more. Features John Duncan, Tetsumi Kudo, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Masahisa Fukase, Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Joe Potts (LAFMS), Takashi Ishii, Rudolf II — Holy Roman Emperor, Akinari Ueda, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Paul Celan, Alain Resnais, Gilyak Amagasaki, Shusaku Arakawa, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Shuji Terayama, Andy Warhol, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, Kyoko Endoh, Princess Yongtai, Salvador Dalí, Ono no Komachi, Kiyoshi Kasai, Caravaggio, Throbbing Gristle, Takizawa Bakin, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Manson Family, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wu Zetian, Genesis P-Orridge, Yusuke Nakahara, Ranpo Lagrange, Mitsusada Fukasaku, Nakai Hideo, Richard Wagner, and many more.
Very Good copy.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 218 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
Erotica September 1969, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica September 1969 is themed "The Situation of Eros".
Good copy, wear/age.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$30.00 - Out of stock
Erotica December 1970, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica December 1970 is themed "The Eros of Theatre: The Aesthetics of Voluptuousness".
Good copy, light wear/age.
2024, English
Softcover (w. hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper), 470 pages, 27.8 x 20.6 cm
Ed. of 50 signed and numbered by the artist,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$180.00 - In stock -
André Piguet (b.1986) is influenced by an ever expanding field of interests; perhaps most simply filed under “WORLD”. He has a long held interest in making books.
For nearly two decades in the late 19th Century, the Swiss filigranologist, Charles-Moïse Briquet systematically visited 235 paper archives and manuscript collections, as well as libraries for about a thousand printed items. He examined 30,840 volumes, as well as 1,432 documents in unbound form, from which he made a total of 44,000 tracings and recorded 65,000 references to the same. This Herculean feat of historical scholarship culminated in the publication of Briquet’s four volume encyclopedia of European paper watermarks, LES FILIGRANES (1907).
A watermark is a small image that appears in paper when held up to light source. In a method dating back to the 12th Century, these designs were bent out of thin strands of copper wire and sewn into a wire paper mould, supported by a wooden frame.
Ranging from the chaos, ferocity and social disruption of the 13th Century to the rise of humanism and clarity of the high renaissance, these images offer a small window into a Europe caught between ancient and modern; of a world where the mundane and mystic still co-existed.
SELECTED WATERMARKS 1282 – 1600 is a condensed 470 page bootleg photocopy edit of Briquet's 1907 publication. Eschewing any formal design or sequencing and stripping the source material to its bare formal elements, Piguet’s book is both an exercise in graphic deconstruction and an exploration into the possibilities and constraints of the photocopier.
Softcover with hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper, cold glue bound. edition of 50 Signed and numbered by the artist. All spine wraps are unique.
These books are entirely made by hand using archival materials.
Founded in 2020, TUTTO is an independent publisher based in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia with a focus on making artist books.
1942, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 126 pages, 19 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rudolf Geering / Basel
$35.00 - In stock -
Rare 1942 edition of Hermann Beckh's Vom Geheimnis Der Stoffeswelt (Alchymie) — (Alchymy: The Secrets of the World of Substances) — published Rudolf Geering, Basel.
As a practising Christian priest, Hermann Beckh was profoundly aware that the mystery of substance – its transmutation in the cosmos and the human being – was a mystical fact to be approached with the greatest reverence, requiring at once ever-deepening scholarship and meditation. He viewed chemistry as a worthy but materialistic science devoid of spirit, while the fullness of spiritual-physical nature could be approached by what he preferred to call ‘chymistry’ or ‘alchymy’, thereby taking in millennia of spiritual tradition.
In consequence, Beckh’s Alchymy: The Secrets of the World of Substances is not limited to the conventional workings of Western alchemy, nor to what can be found in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation – although he does unveil hidden riches there. Neither should Beckh be considered only as a learned Professor with impeccable academic qualifications and European-wide recognition. Beckh writes about such topics as ‘Isis’, ‘the Golden Fleece’, traditional fairy-stories and Wagner’s Parsifal in a way that enables the reader to catch glimpses of the Mystery of Substance; to share the writer’s authentic experience of the divine substantia – the living reality – of Christ in the world.
Beckh’s Alchymy set an entirely new standard, and went on to become his most popular publication.
Hermann Beckh (1875—1937) was a pioneering German Tibetologist and prominent promoter of anthroposophy.
Good copy with tanning, marking, closed edge tears, water marking to dust jacket. Book well preserved. 3rd printing of this edition.
1961, English
Hardcover (w. dust jakcet), 256 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Frederick Muller Limited / London
$110.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1961 hardcover edition of Secret Societies, Afghan author Arkon Daraul's absolute classic occult study, kept in print ever since its first publication.
"This unique and sensational book is the fruit of many years of investigation. The author, in order to make his material as complete as possible, has travelled through Europe and the Middle East to track down survivals of secret societies and has attended ceremonies held by clandestine organisations in the heart of London. He gives the reader details, never before revealed, of the causes of the rise-and fall of secret confederacies; and of the signs, passwords and secret writings used by such organisations. He describes such diverse entities as the underground groups of the Illuminati, the religious ecstatics of Russia, the dread Assassins of Persia and Arabia and the People of The Peacock of Britain and Iraq, and he reveals the secret initiation rites and rituals of magicians. The book shows that almost every social system has produced its secret societies, and that almost anyone you meet may be a member of one!"
Good—Very Good copy in Good—Very Good dust jacket. DJ has general wear and tear to extremities, foxing, tanning, clip to front inner flap. Book G—VG with foxing to end papers, previous owner's name, light tanning. Preserved in mylar wrap.
1982, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$45.00 - Out of stock
Ambroise Paré, born in France around 1510, was chief surgeon to both Charles IX and Henri III. In one of the first attempts to explain birth defects, Paré produced On Monsters and Marvels, an illustrated encyclopedia of curiosities, of monstrous human and animal births, bizarre beasts, and natural phenomena. Janis L. Pallister’s acclaimed English translation offers a glimpse of the natural world as seen by an extraordinary Renaissance natural philosopher.
Scarce 1982 edition. Good—VG copy, light wear and spotting to block edges.