Table Of ContentO P U S C U LA
M A G I CA
VOLUME 2:
ESSAYS ON WITCHCRAFT AND
CROOKED PATH SORCERY
Andrew D. Chumbley
OPUSCULA M A G I CA
Volume II
Essays:
Witchcraft and Crooked Path Sorcery
Andrew D. Chumbley
With illustrations by the Author
THREE HANDS PRESS
20II
Optiscula Magica
Published By THREE HANDS PRESS, 2011
An Imprint of Xoanon Publishing, LLC
Series Editor: Daniel A. Schulke
Essays, Preface and Art © copyright Andrew D. Chumbley 1992-2003.
© Copyright Elizabeth Spedding 2011,
Foreword and Notes to Texts
© Copyright 2011 Daniel A. Schulke, All Rights Reserved.
"The Sabbatic Cultus: An Interview With Andrew D. Chumbley"
© Copyright 1996 Robert Fitzgerald and Andrew D. Chumbley.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced in any
form without written permission from
the copyright holders.
Xoanon Limited and Three Hands Press thank
the following for their kind assistance in the preparation of this volume:
Elizabeth Spedding
Robert Fitzgerald
Clive Harper
Michael Howard
Gavin Semple
Barry William Hale
Michael Staley
James Dunk
Three Hands Press
15510 San Pablo Avenue
Box G313
Richmond Vista, CA 94806
www.threehaiidspress.com
Dust Jacket Design by Bob Eames
Letterpress wraps printed by Dependable Letterpress, San Francisco, California
Fine Binding by Pettingell Bookbindery, Berkeley, California
Table of Contents
Foreword to Volume II 9
Preface 1$
Magick is Not For All 17
The Crooked Path Part I 21
The Crooked Path Part 2 27
The Sabazian Torch 35
Gnosis For the Flesh Eternal 45
A Scattering of Dust From the Wing of the Moth 63
The Cult of the Divine Artist 73
A History of Teachings of the Crooked Path 81
Seven Shades of Solitude 89
Cultus Sabbati: Dream, Provenance, and Magistry 97
The Sabbatic Cultus:
An Interview with Andrew D. Chumbley 101
Notes on the Texts: Volume 2 118
Foreword
Opuscula Magica I, the first volume of collected essays of
Andrew Chumbley, took as its theme 'Witchcraft and the
Sabbatic Tradition'. As a magical dominion, this latter term
denotes a vibrant strand of Traditional Witchcraft emergent
from the present-day magical order Cultus Sabbati, of which
Chumbley served as Magister from 1991 until his death in
2004. These articles served as an exegetic periphery to his
seminal magical text Azoetia: A Gritnoire of the Sabbatic Crajt
(Xoanon 1992, 2002). Amongst their varying concerns are
practices of Traditional Witchcraft operative within the
Cultus, from the simple spell-craft of the Knotted Cord
charm —originating in English folk-sorcery— to more
advanced rites of sexual vision-induction. Importantly, the
works identify the Dream and Dream-sorcery as a key
feature distinguishing the Sabbatic Arcanum from other
forms of Witchcraft.
The present collection continues Chumbley's exposition
of the Craft of the Witches' Sabbath, but in addition treats
Crooked Path Sorcery, one of its central bodies of lore and
practice. A concealed by-way of magic, the Crooked Path is
linked in particular to British cunning-craft, Chumbley's
first, and on-going, contact of initiatic power. Manifesting
through the dual-presence of healing and harming, cursing
and blessing, it wends these extremities to reveal the 'darkly
illuminant' road which lies between and beyond.
As a sorcerous metaphysic it is adumbrated in the magical
principles of Opposition and Inversion found in Chumbley's
Qutub (1995), but reached the height of mystical articulation
in the ophiolatrous rites of his Dragon-Book of Essex.1 Rather
I. The rites of the Dragon-Book of Essex were initially manifest in Essex from 1992-1999; and
in North America from 1998 to the present, exacted by an inner cell of the Cultus Sabbati.
Publication of the grimoire is scheduled by Xoanon Limited in the near future.
Foreword
IO
than the mere exposition of such as an occult manifesto, the
Draconian rites are the Crooked Path in its actuated form,
become vital through the manifest ingenium of the living
body of its Initiates. Aside from the Dragon-Book itself, the
genesis of the rites of Crooked Path Sorcery are spoken of,
in part, in the essay included herein "A History of Crooked
Path Teachings".2
It is tempting to consider Crooked Path Sorcery a
'philosophy of witchcraft'; however due to its serpentine
nature, ethos is far closer to the mark. This relates to the fact
that Traditional Witchcraft, at its root, is not a religion, it is
first and foremost a body of practices, informed by an
indwelling genius. Born of the natural coition of powers
which Wise-Craft fosters, the Crooked Path may be seen as
a perpetual dance between the stations of Holiness and
Heresy, Tradition and the Deviation of the Path. Each
momentary stance must be held in equipoise, the practitioner
fully aware of the summit of its potentials, as well as their
weaknesses, ultimately knowing that mediative integration
will render all duality false and illusory. In witch-lore, this
identification of severance and bifurcation with the Crooked
Road is embodied in numerous forms, one of which is the
Arthana, or double-edged blade. Of it, Chumbley writes:
To contemplate the double-edge of the Arthana's blade is to
mindfully approach the realisation of the Crooked Path's
essential nature. For it reveals the Path of Sudden Change, the
transmutative power which may liberate or destroy; and which,
like the knife, may cut through the bonds of fateful
imprisonment or sever the very flow of life}
Mirroring the fateful division of the knife's edge is the
historical exemplar of wort-bane, a corpus of herblore haunting
a number of Traditional Witchcraft lineages. Instead of
2. See also my article 'The Ophidian Sabbat', Staifirc, Vol. 2 No. 4,2011
j. Dragon-Book ofEssex (1997).
