Elementary Treatise on Practical Magic

by Papus, Piers A. Vaughan (Translator)

Originally published by Papus (Dr. Gérard Encausse) in 1893, this monumental book (510 pages) is now available in English for the first time. As well as a comprehensive introduction to Solomonic Magic, this book gives us a remarkable insight into the esoteric and enlightenment environment of Paris at the end of the 18th Century. Papus uses his medical background in an attempt to place magic alongside the sciences as a school provable through observation and the use of scientific techniques.

510 pages, Hardcover

Published December 12, 2017

About the author

Gerard Encausse, whose esoteric pseudonym was Papus, was born at Corunna (La Coruña) in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there.
As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Kabbalah, occult tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Lévi. He joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded by Madame Blavatsky in 1884 - 1885, but he resigned soon after joining because he disliked the Society's emphasis on Eastern occultism.

In 1888, he co-founded his own group, the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. That same year, he and his friend Lucien Chamuel founded the Librarie du Merveilleux and its monthly revue L'Initiation, which remained in publication until 1914.
Encausse was also a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in Paris, as well as Memphis-Misraim and probably other esoteric or paramasonic organizations, as well as being an author of several occult books. Outside of his paramasonic and Martinist activities he was also a spiritual student of the French spiritualist healer, Anthelme Nizier Philippe, "Maître Philippe de Lyon".
Despite his heavy involvement in occultism and occultist groups, Encausse managed to find time to pursue more conventional academic studies at the University of Paris. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 upon submitting a dissertation on Philosophical Anatomy. He opened a clinic in the rue Rodin which was quite successful.

When World War I broke out, Encausse joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.