Andrew Chumbley - The Dragon-Book of Essex - AZOETIA

This substantial work expounds the sorcerous ethos and praxes of the Crooked Path ritual system. Its contents include a cycle of ten extensive Mystery-rites, each accompanied by adjunctive solitary rituals and detailed commentaries. Additional texts relate the intricacies of Sabbatic ritualization, as well as an extensive body of stellar lore and ritual. The Sorcerous Formulae of Number and Sign are also communicated, together with detailed exegeses of the Quadriga, the specific covine-type of the Crooked Path. A detailed section on the Magical Weapons of the Draconian Sorcerer complements the text. This work is intended as an entire resumé of the ancestral and ophidian components of Traditional Craft Sorcery and Sabbatic Gnosis. The Dragon Book of Essex originally comprised a portion of the rites and practices of an inner conclave of the Cultus Sabbati known as The Column of the Crooked Path.

Following the Azoëtia, The Dragon Book of Essex represents the second work of Chumbley’s three-book magical opus the Trimagisterion. From this period of work, Chumbley formulated ‘Crooked Path Sorcery’ as a trans-historical magical model, operant in a number of systems of sorcery, most notably in the witchcraft of his native Essex. The Crooked Path may be seen to mirror the zoötype of the Serpent, wending between such magical antipodes as blessing and cursing, honour and treachery, Tabu and its breaking. Its quintessential nature is transgressive, and through this apostasy, the illuminant fire of the Serpent descends.

Central to the Draconian ritual cycle is the enfleshment of the primordial Serpent of Eld both within the body of the practitioner as the First Sorcerer Azha-Cain, and within the earth of the World-Field as the Dragon Azhdeha. This dual-natured work is realised through rites of bodily sacrifice unto the Serpent, and subsequently through a year-long cycle of practices. These rites, being solar, lunar, and stellar in nature, transfix the celestial attributes of the Dragon’s Body within the telluric ritual arena and the sensorium of the practitioner.