The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic

Front Cover
Llewellyn Publications, 2015 - 585 pages

A fascinating addition to the magical literature of the Elizabethan era, this lavishly illustrated grimoire is a must-have for magic practitioners, collectors, and historians. The Book of Oberon is the meticulous transcription and translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript acquired by the esteemed Folger Shakespeare Library. Unlike the more theoretical magic books of the era, this collection of spells, secrets, and summonings was compiled gradually by unknown authors for working practical magic.

Now published in a premium hardcover edition retaining the original's red lettering of significant words and holy names, The Book of Oberon includes rituals for summoning a long list of spirits and faeries (including Oberion, Fairy King and close relation to Shakespeare's Oberon); original drawings; common prescriptions used by cunning folk; instructions for dealing with Goetic demons that were censored in other texts; one of the oldest known copies of the magical manual The Enchiridion; and much more. This is a significant contribution to the annals of magical history, bringing to light the kind of grimoire that was commonplace in its era but is rarely published today.

About the author (2015)

Daniel Harms is a librarian and writer living in central New York. His major area of research is magic from antiquity to the present, especially necromancy and fairy magic. He has been published in Fortean Times, the Journal for the Academic Study for Magic, and the Enquiring Eye, as well as chapters for Palgrave Macmillan and Penn State Press books. Harms is also the author of two books on horror fiction and folklore. James R. Clark has been working in various fields of philosophical and esoteric study for nearly two decades. His primary areas of focus are philosophy of number, Golden Dawn, and alchemy. James is a self-taught artist. He has illustrated The Essential Enochian Grimoire, the seventh edition of Israel Regardie's Golden Dawn, and The Book of Oberon. Joseph H. Peterson has been studying esoteric texts for decades, intrigued by the Renaissance intellectual and experimental approach to spirituality. After years of collecting and digitizing rare texts for his own research, in 1995 he created the avesta.org and esotericarchives.com websites to share them with a wider audience. He lives near Rochester Minnesota.

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