Book specifications:
– 92 pages full color
– Burgundy linen bound hardcover
– Limited edition of only 75 exemplars

From the publisher:

Book of Good Angels by Frederick Hockley with an Introduction by A.D. Mercer, author of Liber Coronzom, Runen and The Wicked Shall Decay.

Preview of the INTRODUCTION.

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that Frederick Hockley was one of the most important figures in 19^th and 20^th century occultism, and yet, until relatively recently, very little was known or written about him.

Apart from the excellent The Rosicrucian Seer: the Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley, first published in 1986 almost nothing concerning the magical legacy of Hockley had been available. This is party due to the fact that Hockley himself wrote very little, beyond notes on his magical experiments, some of which appear in the foresaid The Rosicrucian Seer. However, it is not Hockley’s own writings that makes him important, it is the meticulous and artistic way he transcribed existing grimoires and other magical texts, thus ensuring their survival. However, despite the obvious importance of these manuscripts, none of them were available for perusal by serious students of the occult, instead they’ve remained confined to private collections, or held as curios by academic libraries or other such institutions, and it wasn’t until Teitan Press published A Complete Book of Magic Science in 2008 that anything was made available to the public. While The Complete Book was the first, it was by no means the last. To date, there has been more than a dozen Hockley transcribed manuscripts published. However, while more and more of his beautifully hand written reproductions have appeared in print, including the present volume, the man himself remains something of a mystery.

Little is known of his origins or his parentage. As Robert Gilbert observes in The Rosicrucian Seer, the only known record of Frederick Hockley’s birth date is to be found in Hockley’s own copy of the 18^th century Astrologer Ebenezer Sibly’s book Uranoscopia, in which Hockley’s hand written note states that he was born on October 13^th 1808. There appears to be no official record of his birth, or at least nothing has been traced.  Little else of his very early live is known about. According to Hockley himself he was educated at ‘Captain Webb’s School at Hoxton’ (which, in Hockley’s time, would been in the County of Middlesex, now part of the borough of Hackney, London) Where Hockley went after his schooling is something of a mystery as he effectively disappears from sight until sources quoted by Gilbert suggest that, at least for a time, he worked for John Denley, the noted Occult Book seller based in Covent Garden, London.

While we cannot be 100% certain that he actually worked for Denley directly there is no doubt that the two were well acquainted. And, given Hockley’s adept skills at reproducing occult manuscripts, it’s highly likely that Hockley was actually employed to produce such works for Denley to sell. Indeed, if this is the case Hockley got to work early as the first known example of Hockley’s work was offered for sale in 1822, when Hockley would have been around fourteen years old.  Interestingly, Denley’s shop was not merely a ‘retail business’, it was also a hub of occult research and even instruction, for it is John Denley who loaned materials to the noted occult author Frances Barrett to aid in his composition of The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer. Indeed, it has even been suggested that Barrett may have taught Hockley magic and crystal scrying in particular, Hockley’s preferred magical pursuit, in the first place. It is difficult to substantiate this claim. Certainly, in terms of his magical activities, it is crystal scrying or Crystallomancy that Hockley was best known for. Hockley kept comprehensive records of his crystal scrying experiments, and like Dr. John Dee before him; Hockley often employed the skills of a medium to actually ‘see’ into the crystal. Eventually he filled more than 30 journals with the details of these experimentations. He was also known to have sold crystals to ‘interested parties’ including the famed explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton who purchased a crystal in 1852.”