All books and tarots listed below are by Oliver St. John. Click on the images to view the cover art of the books at full size. All full colour and some hardbound books are now only available from Lulu, our distributor. We recommend that our students and subscribers buy our books direct by the links on this page. Thank you for supporting Ordo Astri.
Thunder Perfect Gnosis—Intellectual Flower of Mind
We here follow up points of special interest on Gnostic and other texts, including the remarkable Thunder Perfect Mind. Yoga and a science of the mind is implicit in all of them. Our interest is in metaphysical and universal symbolism; we are not overly concerned with factual references, names, dates and places. The surviving fragments of these ancient texts, as with the Yoga-Sutras, have their true origins in times that were already ancient when the Christian Gospels were being composed. The evidence for a yoga practice and science of the mind in those texts will become clear from studying this book. The second part of the book comprises a careful, practical study of the Yoga-Sutras attributed to Patanjali and Vyasa. There is no simplification or dilution of the yoga method; yet that method is clearly explained. The goal of yoga remains the same: union with God, immortality and even final liberation for those rare individuals that will renounce the world.
The book is hardbound, with endpapers and gold folio stamp on the spine. It comprises 216 pages in all on white papers and is illustrated throughout.
View/order the book from the author’s website here.
Thirty-two paths of Wisdom
Key to the Hermetic Qabalah: Commentary on the Shining Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah and the Paths of Evil.
The first section of this book serves as an introduction to the Qabalah inclusive of the Hebraic tradition, from which the latter was developed, as well as the modern Hermetic tradition. There follows a new commentary on the Thirty-two paths of Wisdom from the most important Qabalistic source work, The Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Formation. ‘The Paths of Evil’ concerns the traditional Qliphoth of the first ten paths and those corresponding to the Zodiac. The last section, ‘The Tunnels of Set’, is a critical reappraisal of Kenneth Grant’s Nightside of Eden Part Two, revealing how Aleister Crowley and then Grant and others worked to invert symbolism, effectively removing all spiritual possibilities for those that would follow them. By placing this in the context of the neo-spiritualist and postmodern occult movement it is shown how the decline and intellectual collapse of an entire civilisation towards the final dissolution of our world is being supernaturally accelerated.
The book is hardbound, linen wrap, blue boards, with endpapers and gold folio stamp on the spine. It comprises 128 pages in all on white papers.
View/order the book from the author’s website here.
Books: The Way of Knowledge in the Reign of Antichrist
This book includes five chapters on the Holy Guardian Angel and five chapters on yoga, as well as some unique observations on the True Self and other matters of vital concern to the practitioner. Here we pass beyond the syncretism of occultism to the synthesis of the metaphysical gnosis. The sequel to Nu Hermetica continues the story where the latter left off, but there is greater focus on practicality, as indicated by the title. The metaphysical gnosis is necessarily the view from the ‘centre’, something that may be shown geometrically, for example the three-dimensional cross or Cube of Space. This is also symbolised in various traditions by the ‘holy city’, the summit of a mountain or its centre. In the Age of Kali Yuga there was effected a withdrawal or hiding of knowledge and initiatic rites were thus placed in caves or labyrinths, either symbolically or literally. All true initiatic paths lead to the same goal and only differ from the point of view of the outsider who only sees the appearance. The outward differences of paths owe merely to cultural or other modifications, as necessary, and none of that is of any consequence to initiation at all.
As was stated in bold terms in Nu Hermetica, we must deal with the conditions of the world that we now find ourselves in. While we will not avoid the subject, as is clear by the full title of The Way of Knowledge, it is necessary to point out that the book is not a comment on social conditions or the more or less extraordinary phenomena that is all part of the ‘signs of the times’.
The book is hardbound, with endpapers and gold folio stamp on the spine. It comprises 196 pages in all on white papers and is fully illustrated.
View/order book from the author’s website.
Books: Nu Hermetica—Initiation and Metaphysical Reality
The voices of the Egyptian neteru are as loud and clear today as they were in ancient history for those who are still able to hear them amidst the noise and tumult of a civilisation that has lost all heart. Nu Hermetica addresses the difficulty of initiation in the twenty-first century—for the Way has not changed but the conditions we work under certainly have. Laws, news, facts and even history are updated, deleted, replaced and rewritten on a daily basis. So-called alternative movements, some of which even claim to be ‘spiritual’, only serve to reinforce profane, anti-spiritual notions. There is a need to pass on real knowledge to those few that are willing and able to receive it.
The book is hardbound, with blue linen boards, endpapers and gold folio stamp on the spine. It comprises 236 pages in all on white papers and is fully illustrated.
View/order book from the author’s website.
Ordo Astri Books: Babalon Unveiled! Thelemic Monographs
Second Edition (2023 Revised)
Second Edition Revised (8th April 2023): Here is the definitive work on Thelema, magick and the key role of the Shakti. ‘Lapis Philosophorum’ redefines Thelema, liberating it from the accretions of modern and postmodernist obfuscation.
‘Babalon Unveiled’ is the title piece of this collection and is one of seven related studies on the mystery of the Goddess in her various names and forms, including that of the Scarlet Woman. Each shows an aspect of her oracular voice as it has been heard and recorded down the ages. ‘Angels of Sacred Dance, Love and Whoredom’ examines how the divine feminine of pre-religious antiquity was demonised, resulting in the host of ‘fallen angels’ whose identity is yet preserved in traditional texts. The book is dedicated to the memory of Rose Edith Kelly, otherwise known as Rose Crowley or Ouarda the Seer. Rose was the medium and intelligence for the transmission activated through the Stele of Revealing in the Cairo museum in 1904.
Format: 6 x 9 hardcover, dustjacket; blue linen boards; gold foil stamp lettering on spine; white end papers, 168 pages in all.
View / order book from the author’s website.
Read an article from the Second Edition here.
Books: Egyptian Tarot of Thelema
In every true act of divination, in every true act of magick, something of the soul is born into the world. This book focuses on the structure of the Tarot and the Qabalistic correspondences that transform it from a card game or fortune telling device into a vehicle of the highest order. The major arcana cards each have a chapter to describe them; a complete method of divination is provided. In creating the Egyptian Tarot (see below for the Tarot deck), we have made full use of Ithell Colquhoun’s ingenius interpretation of the Golden Dawn colour correspondences.
Colquhoun, when explaining her Tarot, or TARO, eschewed the notion of divination. Her abstract Surrealist Tarot was designed purely as a yantra for meditation. As ours is a figurative and symbolic Tarot, it lends itself to meditation, ritual or divination.
“The well-known occult association between the Tarot cards and ancient Egypt is by now commonly dismissed. This is because we live in a time where materialism now dominates the minds of the majority to such an extent that they no longer even think of themselves as materialists. All such arguments, based on ‘evidence’ and ‘fact’, miss the mark. It is irrelevant as to whether or not the ancient Egyptians might have used anything like playing cards or Tarot, whether for amusement, fortune telling or divination. The key to the knowledge is in the symbolism, which, even in the first deck printed from woodcuts, the Tarot of Marseille (late 15th or 16th century), is astonishing. Once it is known that Egypt was the source of all learning and civilisation, there is no longer any need to speculate on the origins of the Tarot. We are not speaking here of artefacts, we are speaking of symbolism that points to a timeless wisdom. This owes to a source far older than that even of the 1st Dynasty of Egypt.”
This book is available from the author’s website at Lulu only.
The book features 78 full colour illustrations of the Tarot. View/purchase:
6 x 9 Standard Edition | full colour interior; premium; paperback
6 x 9 Special Edition | full colour interior; premium; linen wrap hardbound; laid end papers
Egyptian Tarot of Thelema (Tarot Deck)
The Egyptian Tarot of Thelema is suitable for use in ritual, meditation and divination. In every true act of divination, in every true act of magick, something of the soul is born into the world. The system of Qabalistic correspondences transform the Tarot from a card game or fortune telling device into a spiritual, intellectual and magical vehicle of the highest order.
Unique to this Tarot is the use of British surrealist artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun’s interpretation of the magical correspondences. This enabled us to produce the first figurative Tarot that is fully colour-integrated as according to the Golden Dawn schema. The intuitive possibilities afforded by this mean that study and interpretation are taken to a new level. This is especially the case with divination, where colour plays a new and vital rôle in the every-changing dynamic interactions of the cards. To further assist interpretation, the symbols for all the zodiacal, planetary and elemental correspondences are placed on the cards, including the constellational court card assignments.
2.75” x 4.75” (70 mm × 120 mm)
78 cards: linen finish | tuck box
Preview and purchase the deck from Printer Studio:
Egyptian Tarot (USA and World)
Egyptian Tarot (UK)
View the 12 zodiacal trumps and their descriptions here at Ordo Astri.
All books on this page can be ordered direct from the author’s website at Lulu by following the links given here. Proceeds of the sales of our books help to fund Ordo Astri.
Subscribe to our monthly Journal, Metamorphosis here. The Journal is free of charge and is delivered by email. Books in preparation are often previewed and sometimes complete articles from our books are published there.