This edition limited to 200 copies. Hardback bound in green toadskin textured Malory book cloth.  Book is in new unread condition

Published by Hell Fire Club Books

From the publisher:

CHARUBEL (the Welsh astrologer John Thomas  1826 – 1908) remains one of the most enigmatic connections between the witches and cunning men of the last two centuries and the astrologer-magicians of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its dependant traditions into the current day.

Born in Cwmbau, Caerinion Castle, Montgomery Wales on the 9^th November 1826, Charubel went on to become a famous healer and mystic whose students and devoted followers came from all around the world to benefit from his vast store of esoteric knowledge.

Rooted in the ancient herbalist traditions of the Welsh countryside, CHARUBEL went on to master hypnotism, mesmerism, astrology, the art of talismans and psychic healing.

The book we present to the world in its first complete facsimile edition is particularly important as it combines both a knowledge of the delicate healing plants and the active spirits that inhabit them. Sacred names with angelic properties are ascribed to each common herb, binding the worlds of the divine healing powers in the auric field of the healer with the physical properties of the plants themselves. Charubels work (originally appearing as a serial in the magazine ‘The Psychic Mirror’ titled ‘On The Psychology of Botany’) here connects the traditional herbalists work with that of the distant psychic healer and angelic or spirit work of the medieval grimoires.

Each especial plant is given a unique sigil drawn from Charubels extensive knowledge of cunning tradition coupled with personal psychic work over more than sixty years of deep exploration. The sacred or angelic names connected to them link with the harmonic chords of the planetary and zodiacal system he expounded in his magical and occult treatise: ‘On the Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised’ which creates psychic figures or ‘telesmata’ for each of the 360 degrees of the full astrological circle. The operator or medium is contacted with the divine powers of the heavens in their true sacred forms, from the highest powers down to the flowers of the field and herbs of the healer’s garden.

Charubel was a firm believer in the divinity of the spirit world, a man living in the same universe as Swedenborg, William Oxley and the poet William Blake, Charubel occupied his days in psychic communications, the drawing of horoscopes, healing at a distance and by use of talismans. Leading a simple life, never much concerned with money, Charubel dealt out his prescriptions and remedies for everything from common rheumatism to the banishing of elemental spirits, ‘submundanes’, a process in which he was particularly gifted.

As well as being a renowned country cunning man, Charubel was also the founder of a focused occult group known as ‘The Celestial Brotherhood’ which existed quietly under the more public name of ‘The British and Foreign Occult Society’.

Charubel was the head of this esoteric order and the father of a brotherhood that extended in a mystical sense to everybody on earth. He was personally gifted with a precise and rich knowledge of the spirits of the nature in our planet. All the sacred names and their hidden forces were believed to be known by him.

The famous astrologer Alan Leo became a member of this society and adopted the name ‘Agorel’. Each member of this society derived a mystical name from astrological significators, numerology and geometry. Some names were taken from Hebrew. The society had members all over the world and for much of his life he kept up lengthy and frequent correspondence with its members.

The Celestial Brotherhood, or as it was known to the general public, The British and Foreign Society of Occultists, was broadly similar in its workings to the Order of the Golden Dawn. It involved a system of progressive grades, professed to receiving teachings from hidden Adepts on the inner planes and practiced magical and quasi-magical rituals. Two of Charubels students and ‘Celestial Brotherhood’ members were John Yarker (Rites of Memphis & Misraim) and Major Francis George Irwin (an important member of the occult ‘Society of Eight’).

Charubels mystic society was first mentioned in July 1884 in the inaugural issue of ‘The Seer’ magazine, edited by Charubel himself, and later renamed as ‘The Occultist’. Alan Leo was a frequent writer for ‘The Occultist’. References were made in this publication to ‘The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor’ ( a precursor to The Golden Dawn) operated by Peter Davidson and Thomas Henry Burgoyne. The connection appears to have ceased when The Occultist remained under Thomas and Davidson with Burgoyne introducing his own magazine The Occult Magazine in February 1885.

Thomas was already well known for his mediumistic work and for producing material phenomena when he wrote his first published work on the physical country of sacred literature. Other books followed including the ‘Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised’ whose psychic and magical symbols of the degrees of the zodiac went on to influence the Sabian system and the legendary ‘Volasfera’, another collection of astrological material with connections to the ‘Stregha’ or Italian folk witchcraft which has had such a profound influence on the cunning craft we know today.