This book is incredibly valuable to students of various esoteric traditions because the notes and excerpts are taken from private and previously unpublished sources, and from authors whose out-of-print books are not readily accessible. Interesting information has been collected and annotated concerning such topics as blood telegraphy, ever-burning lamps, optics, spiritual skills in healing, transplantation, apparent death, isopathy, and magnetism. Includes a look into a Rosicrucian workshop.

The History of Energy Transference explores the origins of healing, both distant and hands on healing. We all have the potential to be a healing influence on each other.

René Descartes (1596–1650) is one of the towering and central figures in Western philosophy and mathematics. His apothegm “Cogito, ergo sum” marked the birth of the mind-body problem, while his creation of so-called Cartesian coordinates have made our physical and intellectual conquest of physical space possible. But Descartes had a mysterious and mystical side, as well. Almost certainly a member of the occult brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, he kept a secret notebook, now lost, most of which was written in code. After Descartes’s death, Gottfried Leibniz, inventor of calculus and one of the greatest mathematicians in history, moved to Paris in search of this notebook—and eventually found it in the possession of Claude Clerselier, a friend of Descartes. Leibniz called on Clerselier and was allowed to copy only a couple of pages—which, though written in code, he amazingly deciphered there on the spot. Leibniz’s hastily scribbled notes are all we have today of Descartes’s notebook, which has disappeared. Why did Descartes keep a secret notebook, and what were its contents? The answers to these questions lead Amir Aczel and the reader on an exciting, swashbuckling journey, and offer a fascinating look at one of the great figures of Western culture.

Agrippa is known for three books: Natural Magic, Celestial Magic, and Ceremonial Magic. Until Donald Tyson translated books 2 and 3 in 1993, Agrippa's work was not available in English. Schrodter has taken portions of these books -- published in German, and added his own notes and research showing that some of the points Agrippa was making are still valid today.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Known principally as an investigator of the UFO phenomenon and a science fiction novelist, the French-born Vallee (now a resident of the U.S.) has also worked as a computer scientist in both academia and industry. UFOlogists will not find the answers to all of their questions here, for although Vallee believes that UFOs exist, he has no idea just what they are. Therein lies the excellence of his dazzling diary: it offers a glimpse into the mind of a scientist who seems to challenge every preconception and established piety. To his academic training as a mathematician and scientist, which stressed rational approaches to problems, Vallee has brought an interest in the mystical, the psychical, and the paranormal. He has been a Rosicrucian and has studied the works of ancient scientists like Paracelsus. His diary is replete with profoundly insightful, often devastating observations about the strengths and weaknesses of France and the U.S., their academics and their researchers in industry.

Although little known, cannabis and other psychoactive plants held a prominent and important role in the Occult arts of Alchemy and Magic, as well as being used in ritual initiations of certain secret societies. Find out about the important role cannabis played in helping to develop modern medicines through alchemical works. Cannabis played a pivotal role in spagyric alchemy, and appears in the works of alchemists such as Zosimos, Avicenna, Llull, Paracelsus, Cardano and Rabelais. Cannabis also played a pivotal role in medieval and renaissance magic and recipes with instructions for its use appear in a number of influential and important grimoires such as the Picatrix, Sepher Raxiel: Liber Salomonis, and The Book of Oberon. Could cannabis be the Holy Grail? With detailed historical references, the author explores the allegations the Templars were influenced by the hashish ingesting Assassins of medieval Islam, and that myths of the Grail are derived from the Persian traditions around the sacred beverage known as haoma, which was a preparation of cannabis,opium and other drugs. Many of the works discussed, have never been translated into English, or published in centuries. The unparalleled research in this volume makes it a potential perennial classic on the subjects of both medieval and renaissance history of cannabis, as well as the role of plants in the magical and occult traditions.