From Occultism Simplified or the Mystic Thesaurus by Willis F. Whitehead, 1921.

Revealed -- how we furniture shop.  From Kladderadatsch, 1924.

From The Sixth Sense: Psychic Origin, Rationale and Development by Frederic Fletcher, 1907.

The key to ancient cosmology and mystical geography.  From Paradise Found, The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole by William Fairfield Warren, 1885.

We're honored that the luscious Fiddler's Green journal asked to reprint a section of our Young Wizard's Hexopedia, about how to learn a new magic word from a wishing well.  We're also honored that the journal described our book as, "highly recommended practical word magic from a thoughtful and prolific publisher of same." 

"The cubical city unfolded."  From The Apocalypse Unsealed, Being an Esoteric Interpretation of the Initiation of Iôannês ('Apokalypsis 'Iōánnou) Commonly Called the Revelation of [St.] John by James M. Pryse, 1910.

The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid by Charles Staniland Wake, 1882.

From Magic, White and Black, The Science of Finite and Infinite Life, Containing Practical Hints for Students of Occultism by Franz Hartmann, 1904.

"The man unseen—an occultist."  From Wayside Tales, 1906.

"Psychic Causes," a slide from a lecture entitled "Psychic Photography From A New Angle" by C. P. MacCarthy, 1834.

So we're reading surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun's enigmantic novel Goose of Hermogenes and were delighted to encounter the Hermetic secret of drawing a straight line all the way to the horizon.  Before revealing that, here's the novel's official description: "The heroine of this story (described only as 'I') is compelled to visit a mysterious uncle who turns out to be a black magician who lords over a kind of Prospero's Island that exists out of time and space.  Startled by his bizarre behavior and odd nocturnal movements, she eventually learns that he is searching for the philosopher's stone.  When his sinister attentions fall upon the priceless jewel heirloom in her possession, bewilderment turns into stark terror and she realizes she must find a way off the island.  An esoteric dreamworld fantasy composed of uncorrelated scenes and imagery mostly derived from medieval occult sources, Goose of Hermogenes might be described as a gothic novel, an occult picaresque, or a surrealist fantasy."  (By the way, we disagree with the word "uncorrelated" in the description.)  (50Watts has discussed the novel and author here.)

Back to the Hermetic secret, from page 53:

And he dying near by, dying in life, living in death, spending and wasting and dying each time he was with me, each time a step nearer death and death a thought dearer.  He was hungry once with that phosphorescent look about him and asked to be kept alive and I gave him stony gifts; I heaped those stones above him, I laid him in that bed of boulders.  We were held together at last by slanderous bonds, by ridicule, hatred, contempt, but there were older bonds than those, the sulphur, the phosphor, the salt.  Now lying in a small graveyard near bones of kings and beaten gold, he is learning the length of the horizon and drawing perhaps where the worms twine a straighter line than ever before; drawing perhaps the straight wand of Hermes, with the snakes making spirals around it to right and left, the red and the blue, gyres that I must try to compas.  Lying there far from the shrine of a pillow, he is echoing that distant day when the first words he spoke were Listen to me!  And crying a far cry out of a six-foot cradle he is saying again Listen!

Indeed!

From First Lessons in Reality or the Psychical Basis of Physical Health by Sarah Stanley Grimké, 1886.

An illustration from Modern Psychical Phenomena: Recent Researches and Speculations by Hereward Carrington (1919).  The caption reads: "Huge hypnotic wheel, as used in the 'mysteries of Myra,' containing more than 50 revolving mirrors, reflecting light."