Clavis Goêtica

Keys to Chthonic Sorcery

Clavis Goêtica: Keys to Chthonic Sorcery

Frater Acher and José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal. With a foreword by Jake Stratton-Kent. Colour illustrations by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal.

Hadean Press, April 2021, 140 pages. Hardcover edition sold out; paperback available.

Clavis Goêtica presents a reference to the 16th-century tale of the first white magician, Johannes Beer, who is brought back from the dead in this book. And yet, the title as well as the essays united in this volume hold a deeper meaning: this key to the underworld is a living being, a spirit in its own right, that only comes to life when magic is performed as an act of co-creation of equals.

In this book Frater Acher and José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal have joined creative forces to break through the perceived dichotomy of left-hand and right-hand paths of practical magic. Through careful historical research, concrete ritual analysis and their own experience as practitioners they show a path towards a more balanced way of approaching magic in the underworld, one where the chthonic spirits are invited to unlock what is theirs, while equally the magician is held accountable to contribute what is uniquely human about them. Only when both sides contribute fairly to the magical (p)act, can the key be turned that is the clavis goêtica.

Read the foreword to Clavis Goêtica by Jake Stratton-Kent below.

LVX,

  • Our author here describes and draws upon adventures in remote mountain caves and in obscure and overlooked literary sources, revealing a goêtia less concerned with trivial desires, and more with exploring the underworld, rescuing souls and a ministry that embraces the world of spirits. […]

    Our author's amazing ability to locate and present relevant examples of this kind, illustrating themes which more stereotyped presentations overlook entirely, is a strongpoint, not a failing. I am naturally gratified that my own work – the Encyclopedia Goetica and its parts – is offered as a jumping off point for such investigations. While other investigators may follow many differing routes in such fertile and underexplored territory, the themes of practical eschatology and much else are brilliantly explored here.