A note about the price: This book is of a rare nature, not for the general public, and the author has priced it accordingly. Less affluent readers are invited to pursue used copies or contact the author directly. Whether carved into amulets, daubed onto parchment, traced through ashes, or scratched in sand, ritual diagrams are the age-old precursors to our modern circuit boards, their intricately flowing lines summoning powerful energies. Five thousand years ago in China, the Yin-Yang alchemists of Taoism painted mysterious calligraphy onto rice paper, creating magic talismans imbued with the secrets of the universe. Each stroke and dot of their ink comprised a program for channeling the forces of nature, whether it be to influence human events or to establish contact with the non-material realm. In later years, and on other continents, the spiritual ancestors of the Taoist sorcerers developed their own systems of charms. In West African Vodou ceremonies, we find striking v�v� diagrams, those stylized "character sketches" that compel the deities to come forward. In Europe, we find the goetic sigils, those mystical glyphs documented in the grimoires of Medieval evocation rites. Interestingly, the sigils and the v�v�s share some striking parallels. In both cases, the diagrams conjure astral forces into the earthly plane, and they do so with some very similar symbols. Do the similarities constitute mere coincidence, or do they point to a profound significance?

The Lesser Key of Solomon, also known as Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis or simply Lemegeton, is an anonymous grimoire on demonology. It was compiled in the mid-17th century, mostly from materials a couple of centuries older. It is divided into five books—the Ars Goetia, Ars Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, and Ars Notoria. This edition was translated by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and published by Aleister Crowley under the title The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King. Crowley added some additional invocations previously unrelated to the original work, as well as essays describing the rituals as psychological exploration instead of demon summoning.

#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • An intelligent, lightning-paced thriller set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, D.C., with surprises at every turn. “Impossible to put down.... Another mind-blowing Robert Langdon story.” —The New York Times Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His plans are interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of esoteric, potentially dangerous wisdom. When his mentor Peter Solomon—a long-standing Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth ... all under the watchful eye of Dan Brown's most terrifying villain to date.

Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of "Finnegans Wake" - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of "Finnegans Wake." The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify -- and clarify -- its complex web of images and allusions. "A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" is the latest addition to the "Collected Works of Joseph Campbell" series.

In 2010, Richard Merrick took a family trip to Scotland's Rosslyn chapel—the enigmatic fifteenth-century temple made famous by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Little did he know he was about to embark upon an intellectual and personal journey that would lead to the discovery of a real-life lost symbol—one that reveals the connection between the world's most sacred temples and opens up a treasure trove of lost science and ancient secrets. The symbol he discovers—the Venus Blueprint—is based on that planet's orbital pattern, which takes the shape of a five-pointed star when seen from Earth. As Merrick digs deeper, he realizes the Venus Blueprint was an integral part of the design template of some of the most significant religious architecture around the world--including St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the Roman Pantheon, the Greek Parthenon, the Temple of Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, as well as many buildings designed by the secretive Freemason society. Upon further examination, Merrick is astounded to discover that temples designed using the Venus Blueprint are endowed with extraordinary acoustics that, when supplied with the right tones and frequencies, are capable of harmonizing with Earth's resonant frequencies and evoking altered states of consciousness. He then proposes a fascinating idea: Could it be that the ancients used these harmonics to enhance entheogenically induced visions—to commune with the divine and liberate the gods within? Supported by an impressive array of historical research and scientific analysis, The Venus Blueprint offers compelling evidence of an ancient lost culture that was both spiritually and scientifically advanced.

The Greater Key of Solomon is a 14th century Grimoire written by an anonymous author and is divided in three parts called Books. It contains invocations, conjurations and ways to summon Spirits from the spirit realm as well as the Spirits of Demons and punished souls from Hell. The Grimoire gives theoretical information and step by step practical guidance on an array of topics such as planetary hours, celestial bodies, prayers, ritual preparation, communication with Angels and Spirits, exorcisms, magickal amulets, the preparation and use of ritual equipment and more. Note from the Publisher: The illustrations in this book come from enhanced scans of the original seals. The scans have been painted over by hand using black ink and then re-scanned in order to improve the texture and make the lines and letters more legible, as some of the pages and illustrations of the book have deteriorated due to the manuscript's age, and they appear faded or broken. The original manuscript can be found in the British Museum.