Teitan Press has just released its latest publication in its Hockley series, Metaphysical Spiritual Philosophy: Discourses through the Magic Mirror with Eltesmo and Emma Louisa Leigh, from the Manuscripts of Frederick Hockley.
As with other crystal-gazers from the annals of magic, Frederick Hockley made extensive use of scryers who would see spirits and report them. This collection reprints the work of two of these scryers. One was Emma Louisa Leigh, a young girl and family friend who made contact with a spirit known as the Crowned Angel, along with another known as Eltesmo. Emma died young, leaving Hockley to seek other seers. One of these was a Mrs. Lea, who allowed Hockley to reach out to Emma.
This book collects two spirit operations. The first is a lengthy spiritual treatise dictated by Emma from Eltesmo. The second are a series of conversations between Hockley and the now-spiritual Emma, in which they discuss the afterlife and Emma’s continued concerns about the material world. These are provided both as transcripts and as black and white facsimiles of the original texts.
Alan Thorogood provides his usual excellent introduction, in this case passing over the basics of Hockley’s life to delve into these particular scrying sessions and Hockley’s cosmology of the afterlife. The only omission that I noted was a discussion of the Hockley material at the Library of Congress, which includes a drawing of a talisman of Eltesmo that was sitting on my desk when I received the book.
If you’re familiar with the usual tropes and content of channeled and spiritually-received material, you have a good idea of what you’ll encounter here. Those seeking profound or revelatory material will be disappointed, but those who are interested in the history of either nineteenth-century magic or spiritual contact literature should seek out this work.
Papers Falling from an Attic Window 
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