(Ceres crowned with a cornucopia, from Bayley's Lost Language of Symbolism, 1913)
May 2, 2007
After a lapse of four years, I've decided to bring back this Web site in a slightly slimmed form. I took it down because I found it was consuming too much of my time and energy, and also, paradoxically enough, because it had grown too popular. Free Web site hosts couldn't handle the bandwidth requirements, and I had no desire to buy a dedicated domain for it.
Originally the site was created as a way for me to learn basic HTML tags and Web page construction, but it grew to unmanageable dimensions - or at least, to dimensions beyond those I was prepared to deal with. It was a case of whether I would spend time maintaining and updating the site, or time writing new books. I decided the books were more important.
I've been asked for various works on the site repeatedly over the past few years, so I am putting it back up for that reason, to make its contents available. However, I can't take the time to update the links I used to maintain on the old site, or respond to e-mails, so those parts of the old site have been removed, for the most part. I left a few links that seem to be stable.
From time to time I will add new essays and expand various features of the site. The schedule will be irregular, as my other work permits.
May 24, 2003
A new addition has been made to the Sources and Resources page, the full text of the 1889 work Ophiolatreia by Hargrave Jennings, who is best known as the author of The Rosicrucians. The term "ophiolatria" means serpent worship. The work was published under the title Serpent Worship in 1980 by Tutor Press of Toronto, Canada, and I have used this edition as my reference.
May 9, 2003
Five fonts that I created for my books may be downloaded for personal use from the new Esoteric Fonts page. These were available on Supernatural World a while ago, but a problem with downloading zipped files from the site caused me to remove them. The rune fonts and esoteric symbol font are fairly utilitarian, but the Madimi Enochian font (it is two fonts rolled into one, script Enochian on the lowercase keys and print Enochian on the uppercase keys) is quite attractive.
After a problem with browsing pages and graphics via a regular modem connection on the original host for the supernaturalworld.com domain, the domain was moved to a new host, and seems to be working smoothly.
October 26, 2002
Added to Storybook Corner is The Voice In the Night, a story by W. H. Hodgson that taps the same vein of cosmic horror mined so assiduously by H. P. Lovecraft, who admired Hodgson's work.
October 22, 2002
Another major addition to the site was made today, the complete 1904 edition of The Goetia, translated and illustrated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, and edited by Aleister Crowley. I've added an extensive set of notes to accompany the scattered notes of Mathers and Crowley, which should prove useful in setting this work in the context from which it arose, and explaining some of its more obscure aspects.
October 5, 2002
The short story August Heat by W. F. Harvey has always been one of my favorite supernatural tales. Today I added it to Storybook Corner, where I am building an anthology of what I consider the best occult short fiction available in the public domain. The only rules I follow in selecting stories is that they must be well-written, frightening, and must have as their subject some significant aspect of the supernatural. I've also decided to limit each author to only one work.
August 30, 2002
A major addition to the site was made today, my original translation into English of Court de Gébelin's famous 1781 essay Du Jeu des Tarots (The Game of Tarots), along with the essay on Tarot divination by the Comte de Mellet that accompanies it in Court de Gébelin's book. I made this translation for my own use, when I failed to find a freely available English version on the Internet, and I thought it would be of interest to other students of the Tarot who may not have had access to these essays.
Since my French is quite weak, the translation should be regarded as suitable for reading purposes only. I will endeavor to correct its errors as I become aware of them.
As a helpful addition to the text, I've included all twenty-two drawings of the Tarot trumps that accompanied the essays in the 8th volume of Court de Gébelin's work Monde primitif. The symbolism of these illustrations does not correspond perfectly with the descriptions - this is especially noticeable in the essay by de Mellet - but the drawings show fairly well how the two authors perceived the Tarot trumps. In the original book the images of the trumps were gathered together on several plates - I have placed them separately next to the text that describes them. The Web page may load slowly due to the large number of graphics.
July 7, 2002
The article Truth About the Tarot was extensively revised and expanded to include more factual information that may be of use to readers.
July 5, 2002
No major additions, just a little tinkering. I added several books on the Tarot to the Sourcebooks On Magic and the Occult page.
June 29, 2002
Another addition to the Answers to E-mail Questions section titled "How Does Magic Differ From Prayer?" A biography of the occult writer Arthur Edward Waite was added to the Biographies of the Occult section.
June 28, 2002
The latest addition to the site is an explanation of the meaning to Aleister Crowley of the number 777, titled "What Does 777 Mean?". It appears in the Answers to E-mail Questions section. I have received many good questions over the past few months, and have responded to a number of them at length. I intend to post up half a dozen or so of those answers in the near future, when I get them formatted.
September 4, 2001
An Experiment For A Fairy, a brief ritual of spirit evocation extracted from the unpublished grimoire Liber Salomonis, along with my own extensive explanatory commentary on the ritual, was added to the Fragments From the Grimoires section.
June 11, 2001
A new addition was made to the Answers to E-mail Questions section of the site that responds to two queries concerning my book Tetragrammaton. The first question deals with the correct way to draw the pathways on the Tree of the Sephiroth. The second question concerns the accurate ordering for the twelve Banners of IHVH, the Fourfold Name of God.
May 10, 2001
My digitally cleaned versions of Aleister Crowley's Audio Recordings of the First Two Enochian Keys, both in English and in the Enochian language, are once again available for download in the form of zipped mp3 files. I have expanded my introduction to Crowley's recordings of the Keys to provide a little background information which may help those unfamiliar with Enochian magic to understand what these recordings are all about.
April 23, 2001
The front page of Supernatural World was redesigned and simplified, in keeping with the laudable current trend among Webmasters to make their sites easier to view and faster to download. The page is quite a bit more compact than it used to be, though none of its functionality has been sacrificed.
April 16, 2001
Short stories The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford and The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers were added to the Storybook Corner section of the site. The brief essay "Is Supergirl a Spirit?" was placed in the Answers to E-mail Questions section.
April 9, 2001
The "Precepts of Pythagoras" were made available in the Sources and Resources section, along with my explanations of their meanings.
March 29, 2001
New to the revised Supernatural World are two articles in the Truth About section on the front page, one on Miracles and the other on Crystal Gazing. More than a dozen descriptions and portraits of demons were added to the Plague of Demons section. In the Sources and Resources section was placed a corrected version of the Alphabet of Angels of Dr. Rudd. Also added during this major upgrade was an essay in the Answers to E-mail Questions section responding to the query, How Did John Dee Meet the Enochian Angels?