In the highly acclaimed The Faceless God, Dr. Vincente establishes hitherto unexplored connections between the European lore of the Witches’ Sabbath and the archaic fertility cult of the ram-headed Banebdjedet, a totemistic representation of Osiris in his netherworld aspect – Osiris as the Black Sun. It is the daemon of the depths, the Faceless God, who serves as the bridge between these two esoteric currents. This dark psychopomp, who reveals the mysteries of the Black Sun, was fictionalized by Lovecraft as Nyarlathotep. The Egyptians knew him as Anubis, and in European witch lore he is described as the black man of the Sabbath, the initiator of the witch cult. Thus the book has a triple focus – Lovecraftian, Egyptian and Sabbatic. It is not a question of extracting a complete occult system from Lovecraft’s stories, or drawing exact correspondences between entities of his Mythos and gods and spirits of paganism. There is no system to be decoded. Instead there are traces, insinuations, echoes of a genuinely primal vision found in his nightmarish worlds.

Supporting his arguments with the strategic use of qabalistic methods, Dr. Vincente achieves a careful balance between esoteric hermeneutics and scholarly methodologies, so that the reader is always drawn back to the concrete realities of magical practice. A set of powerful rituals of initiation, sexual gnosis and sorcery will enable the discerning initiate to operate effectively within the sinister dimensions of this counter current.

Introduced by David Beth this work is indispensable for any serious student of diabolism and the Sabbatic Gnosis.

This meticulously updated edition includes a completely new introduction by the author, alongside other valuable additions. It also features an exclusive new essay by David Beth titled “Children of the Abyss”.