Books

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. We recommend that our students and subscribers buy our books direct by the links on this page. Thank you for supporting Ordo Astri.


Books on Metaphysics

For books on magick and ritual scroll down or click the anchor here.

Thunder Perfect Gnosis—Intellectual Flower of Mind

Thunder Perfect Gnosis—Intellectual Fower of MindWe 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.

Read an article from this book 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.

Thirty-two paths of Wisdom front cover artThe 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

Books: The Way of Knowledge front coverThis 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

Books: The Way of Knowledge front coverThe 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.

Read an artice from this book here.


Magick and Ritual

Books under the Ordo Astri Imprimatur include books on magick and ritual. These include  rituals of grades and degrees based on the Hermetic or Qabalistic Tree of Life, and many subsidiary methods and practices. Such methods include divination, astrology, skrying, Enochian Magick, consecration of talismans and symbolic weapons. Taken together, they represent the quintessance of occult practices, as developed and brought to the highest level of perfection over many years of practice by the Order foundation.


Ordo Astri Books: Babalon Unveiled! Thelemic Monographs
Second Edition (2023 Revised)

Books: Babalon Unveiled! Thelemic Monographs Cover ArtSecond 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 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.


Hermetic Qabalah Foundation—Complete Course
Fifth Edition (revised)

Hermetic Qabalah Foundation—Complete CourseHerein is the key to spiritual alchemy, magick and yoga: the Tree of Life is seeded in the astrosome of the magician so the rituals and practices are a gateway to true knowledge. Awakening the Serpent Power allows the development of possibilities required to transcend the perceptions of the mind and realise true knowledge. The Angel or supranatural power of divinity can assist in the conscious return to the Garden of Eden. The Qabalah is the basis for meditation, magick, astrology and tarot, including the art of gematria, talismans, invocation and evocation, the pentagram and hexagram and symbolic weapons. All this is seamlessly integrated with the one-year practical coursework through ritual meditation. Preliminary work includes the Wisdom of Breath, Ritual Sonics, Assumption of the Godform and a variant form of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. The student then moves, step-by-step, towards creation of an astral double by which the individual possibilities are extended.

View or order the book here.


Hermetic Order: Ritual Magick—Initiation of the Star and Snake
Fifth Edition now available

Hermetic Order: Ritual Magick—Initiation of the Star and SnakeThe rituals and methods given in this book are drawn from the legacy of the Hermetic Order of the Star and Snake. It is a complete magical system of initiatic grades or degrees, brought to the highest level. Our ritual mandala objectifies the Cosmic Serpent. The winding snakes of the Caduceus are the dual expression of the Occult Force. The lunar and solar forces are invoked simultaneously to raise consciousness in the central column. We orient to the stellar North, the place of greatest power. It marks the ‘imperishable’ or immortal constellations that circle the Polar Axis. In the ritual circle, the North is a gateway for manifestation of the invoked forces of the operation. The sounding of eleven knocks or knells for us signifies the perfect harmonisation of the macrocosm, the ‘six’, and the microcosm, the ‘five’.

Subjects include the Eight Limbs of Yoga, the Circle of the Place, Mudras or signs of the grades, Ritual of the Gates of Babalon, the, formulation of the Magical Name, Opening and Closing the Temple, Star and Snake Tantra-yoga, (revised) Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram, Rising on the Planes, Skrying and Clairvoyance, Consecration of Talismans, the Egyptian Mass, Ritual for Psychic Self-defence, the Holy Guardian Angel, Ritual of the Rosy Cross, Consecration of the Magical Sword, Goetic Evocation, the Ceremony of the Watchtowers and Enochian Magick.

Format: Trade paperback; perfect binding (6” x 9”); 284 pages in total.

View/order the book here.


Forthcoming Books and Tarot: Egyptian Tarot

Egyptian Tarot Book FrontA new publication of this book is expected early 2025. The re-titled Egyptian Tarot will be available in a boxed set with the revised and re-published Egyptian Tarot book early in 2025. An agreement has been signed with Crossed Crow Books (Chicago) for world wide distribution (Red Wheel Weiser). More details will follow as this is now a work in progress.

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.”


About the Author

All books on this page other than Egyptian Tarot and book 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.

Oliver St. John YouTube Channel.

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