Crooked Confessions
An Ophidian Philosophy of the Sanctified Devil –
Blades of Grass After the Scythe
by Ian C. Edwards, PhD
“Forever becoming Magic; content to stand a dancing contradiction.”
This groundbreaking book argues for a rebellious, transformative philosophy, based on becoming the “Sanctified Devil,” an archetypal figure who transgresses and transcends ideas of good and evil through personal transformation and magical practice.
CORE IDEAS:
The Scythe
A new way to philosophise beyond Nietzsche's hammer, into the Crooked Path
Ophidian Ontology
A worldview where reality is dynamic and shaped by magical or transformative action
Sorcerous Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus is reinterpreted as a symbol of endless self-creation
Promethean Fire
A full metaphysics of transgression, theft, and sacred defiance
Ethics of the Sanctified Devil
Georges Bataille's ecstatic thought reimagined for the practicing occultist
Living Praxis
Concludes with the Psalterium Diabolus Sanctus, usable for ritual practice
This is not a book for the timid or the orthodox. It is for those willing to hold paradox and transform crucified suffering into joyous laughter, to become the Übermensch the tradition forgot to name…
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Table of Contents
Uncanny Prologue: Serpentine Scopophilia
Chapter I: Introduction – From the Hammer to the Scythe
Chapter II: Geminus Metaphysics – Towards an Ophidian Ontology
Chapter III: Sisyphus’s Crooked Gait
Chapter IV: Ethics of the Sanctified Devil
Chapter V: Prometheus and the Metaphysics of Fire
Chapter VI: Conclusion – An-0ther Beginning and the Beyond of Metaphysics
Uncanny Epilogue: Conversationem Curvum
Appendix A: Psalterium Diabolus Sanctus
Appendix B: Dancing into the Abyss by Luke S. Edwards
Bibliography
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Illustrated by Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos.
Standard Hardcover Edition - Limited to 300 copies
184 pages. Printed full colour hardcover. Black + red head and tail bands.
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Press, reviews, endorsements
Interview with Ian C. Edwards by Gallowglass Books - read it here
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About the Author
Dr. Ian C. Edwards is a licensed psychologist in private practice and holds both administrative and clinical positions at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania. He describes his approach as “dialectical non-dualism”, where he infuses the act of writing with method and content, through a spiritual phenomenology that attempts to inscribe the sacred as a self-referential embrace that reconciles the psycho-spiritual spaces in which dualities and oppositions such as being and non-being, good and evil, self and other, are made manifest.
He is the author of the Being and Non-Being in Occult Experience series published by Atramentous Press, as well as “The Divine Hearth and Radical Hospitality,” which appeared in PILLARS - A Wayfarer’s Hearth (Vol. 2, Issue 3) and A Druid in Psychologist’s Clothing: E. Graham Howe’s Secret Druidic Doctrine, both published by Anathema Publishing. He reads occult texts using a method that combines grammatology with a participatory epistemology that explores and describes ontologies of deific forms.
