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Holy Heretics
Holy Heretics is the third and final volume in the Holy Daimon cycle. Blending occult philosophy, magic and mysticism, Frater Acher guides the reader through the centuries with a series of practical exercises and rites which ultimately restore the powerful Olympic spirits to their original magical context.
Frater Acher identifies certain techniques of mysticism as a prerequisite for the work of magic, as the often missing element in the development of a serious practice. The advanced magical rites Holy Heretics contains are built from the foundations of simple practical exercises. These are provided and carefully explained. When performed, these rites form a luminous chain for the student who wishes to attain to adepthood and the mastery of empty-handed magic.
Holy Heretics offers a challenge to magicians who have reactively rejected Christianity, and a challenge to Christians who are unaware of the heretical tensions that run throughout Christian mysticism. As Acher writes, ‘I am very aware that searching for such a path among the very people who for centuries tried to usurp and control or deform and kill the Western magical tradition is a big ask. On such an expedition to find the narrow path we’ll soon be crawling through the bones, blood and ashes of our ancestors. And yet, at the same time we’ll also encounter beauty and genuine practice, true grace and deep spiritual power.’ The mystic and magician is always a threat to spiritual orthodoxy, and Acher navigates us through that difficult space. As a guide, he approaches the Christian material fairly, is generous when appropriate, and unapologetic when describing its worst excesses. The work draws extensively from manuscript sources and texts that are not available in English, illuminating a hitherto neglected world. All is done with the aim of extracting the spiritual gold of our own heart prayer, rather than imbibing the poison of orthodoxy.
In Book I of Holy Heretics we are taken on a mystical tour de force, beginning with the Desert Fathers and the austerities forged in the wilderness. From Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite we discover mystical prayer as a method to bypass the cognitive mind, and then enter into the inner stillness of Hesychasm. We stand with Symeon the New Theologian at the edge of the Abyss, and witness the remarkable visions of Hildegard of Bingen. We watch the potential of the mustard seed unfold, and encounter the radical this-worldliness of the Theologia Germanica, a manifesto for the gnostic practitioner that threatens the supremacy of the Catholic Church itself by directing the individual to seek their own illumination.
In Book II, Frater Acher turns his attention to magic, as an art of symphonic harmonious co-creation. The nature of the magical call is described, and the use of the magical bell introduced with historical examples. Next Acher considers Paracelsus, giving a full English translation of his little known Arcanum arcanorum, a celestial rite to summon both one’s holy daimon and the seven Olympic spirits with such a bell. The rite is expertly deciphered, from its use of alchemical tincture to its astrological timing, by following clues across the Paracelsian and Pseudo-Paracelsian corpus. The work culminates with Frater Acher’s restored version of the Ritual of the Olympic Spirit, opening the gates of the seven spirits and uniting them into one greater Olympic Spirit. The final act thus draws on all the lessons that Holy Heretics has laid out and the flame burning in our hearts.
Frater Acher identifies certain techniques of mysticism as a prerequisite for the work of magic, as the often missing element in the development of a serious practice. The advanced magical rites Holy Heretics contains are built from the foundations of simple practical exercises. These are provided and carefully explained. When performed, these rites form a luminous chain for the student who wishes to attain to adepthood and the mastery of empty-handed magic.
Holy Heretics offers a challenge to magicians who have reactively rejected Christianity, and a challenge to Christians who are unaware of the heretical tensions that run throughout Christian mysticism. As Acher writes, ‘I am very aware that searching for such a path among the very people who for centuries tried to usurp and control or deform and kill the Western magical tradition is a big ask. On such an expedition to find the narrow path we’ll soon be crawling through the bones, blood and ashes of our ancestors. And yet, at the same time we’ll also encounter beauty and genuine practice, true grace and deep spiritual power.’ The mystic and magician is always a threat to spiritual orthodoxy, and Acher navigates us through that difficult space. As a guide, he approaches the Christian material fairly, is generous when appropriate, and unapologetic when describing its worst excesses. The work draws extensively from manuscript sources and texts that are not available in English, illuminating a hitherto neglected world. All is done with the aim of extracting the spiritual gold of our own heart prayer, rather than imbibing the poison of orthodoxy.
In Book I of Holy Heretics we are taken on a mystical tour de force, beginning with the Desert Fathers and the austerities forged in the wilderness. From Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite we discover mystical prayer as a method to bypass the cognitive mind, and then enter into the inner stillness of Hesychasm. We stand with Symeon the New Theologian at the edge of the Abyss, and witness the remarkable visions of Hildegard of Bingen. We watch the potential of the mustard seed unfold, and encounter the radical this-worldliness of the Theologia Germanica, a manifesto for the gnostic practitioner that threatens the supremacy of the Catholic Church itself by directing the individual to seek their own illumination.
In Book II, Frater Acher turns his attention to magic, as an art of symphonic harmonious co-creation. The nature of the magical call is described, and the use of the magical bell introduced with historical examples. Next Acher considers Paracelsus, giving a full English translation of his little known Arcanum arcanorum, a celestial rite to summon both one’s holy daimon and the seven Olympic spirits with such a bell. The rite is expertly deciphered, from its use of alchemical tincture to its astrological timing, by following clues across the Paracelsian and Pseudo-Paracelsian corpus. The work culminates with Frater Acher’s restored version of the Ritual of the Olympic Spirit, opening the gates of the seven spirits and uniting them into one greater Olympic Spirit. The final act thus draws on all the lessons that Holy Heretics has laid out and the flame burning in our hearts.
308 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 20, 2022
About the author
Frater Acher
17 books74 followersFrater Acher is the author of theomagica.com as well as a friend and collaborator of Quareia Magical Training. He holds an MA in Communications Science, Intercultural Communications and Psychology as well as certifications in Systemic Coaching and Gestalt Therapy. He has studied Western Ritual Magic in theory and practice at I.M.B.O.L.C. (magieausbildung.de) and has been actively involved in magic as a lone practitioner for more than twenty years. Frater Acher is a German national, and after several years of living abroad, he is now resident in Munich, Germany. Previous publications include 'Cyprian of Antioch: A Mage of Many Faces' (Quareia Press 2017) and 'Speculum Terræ' (Hadean Press 2018).
The Holy Daimon online project is a resource dedicated to research into, and the translation of ritual manuscripts from the 15th to 18th century with a focus on texts of daimonic theurgy.
The Holy Daimon online project is a resource dedicated to research into, and the translation of ritual manuscripts from the 15th to 18th century with a focus on texts of daimonic theurgy.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 31, 2023
Frater Acher has certainly become one of the most important authors in the "serious" occult community, first through his blog, later in the last years through his books. Again, as with the other two installments in the trilogy "holy Heretics" comprises the last part of, his voice is gentle but of an analytical clarity and precision which runs in a most pleasurable way against the often obfuscating nature of much occult scripture. His work is that of enlightening, scrutinizing sources, demonstrating their relevance and making them workable in a contemporary context without watering down. the book is structured in two main parts, the first being "Mysticism", the second "Magic" with accompanying analysis and practice. If you know his other works or maybe McCarthies "Quareia"-course you broadly know, what to expect here.
Note: I am quite sure, Hildegard from Bingen wouldn't share his interpretation of her works, at the same time I'm much more with Acher on the subject of balance, so I don't hold that against this book.
Note: I am quite sure, Hildegard from Bingen wouldn't share his interpretation of her works, at the same time I'm much more with Acher on the subject of balance, so I don't hold that against this book.
August 29, 2026
Holy Heretics is one of the more intellectually serious attempts I have encountered to address a problem that haunts contemporary Western magic: we have inherited a tradition whose contemplative technologies are deeply entangled with Christianity, while many modern practitioners understandably regard the institutions of Christianity with profound suspicion. Frater Acher refuses the easy solutions available on either side. He neither asks the magician to become a Christian nor treats fifteen centuries of Christian mystical practice as disposable contamination. Instead, he enters that inheritance archaeologically, looking for techniques of direct encounter that survived beneath, beside, and occasionally in opposition to ecclesiastical authority.
The first half of the book is consequently far more important than a reader primarily interested in the Olympic spirits might initially expect. Acher moves through the Desert Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, hesychastic practice, Symeon the New Theologian, the Granum Sinapis, and the Theologia Germanica, among other currents, examining what happens when theology ceases to be merely propositional and becomes experiential. His treatment of Pseudo-Dionysian unknowing is particularly significant because it establishes one of the book's central premises: sophisticated magic requires the cultivation of faculties that cannot simply be reduced to intellectual comprehension, visualization, or the mechanical execution of ritual instructions. The magician must learn how to approach a mode of perception in which the ordinary structures of cognition become permeable.
This leads naturally into Acher's emphasis upon the heart, or heart-flame, as an organ of mystical and magical participation. Rather than presenting mysticism as a pious ornament attached to operative magic, he reverses the usual hierarchy and argues that certain forms of mystical training are prerequisites for advanced magical work. That proposition deserves considerably more attention within contemporary occultism. Ceremonial magic has accumulated increasingly elaborate technologies of invocation, correspondences, implements, and textual reconstruction, yet comparatively little attention is sometimes given to the transformation of the person performing them. Holy Heretics insists that the operator is ultimately the principal instrument.
The transition into the second half is therefore extremely well conceived. Acher's discussion of magical calling, the bell, Paracelsus, and the Olympic spirits grows out of everything preceding it rather than appearing as an unrelated grimoiric appendix. Of particular historical interest is his treatment of the little-known Arcanum arcanorum attributed to Paracelsus, which he translates and reconstructs through comparison with the wider Paracelsian and pseudo-Paracelsian corpus. The text concerns contact with the holy daimon and the seven Olympic spirits, and Acher follows its clues through alchemical preparation, astrological timing, and ritual procedure before presenting his restored Rite of the Olympic Spirit.
This is where the book becomes genuinely fascinating from the perspective of grimoire studies. The Olympic spirits are often encountered today almost exclusively through the Arbatel, with subsequent practitioners treating them as seven relatively discrete planetary intelligences available for invocation. Acher attempts something considerably more ambitious. His reconstruction places them within a Paracelsian cosmology in which the seven may ultimately be integrated into a greater Olympic Spirit, transforming the work from a sequence of planetary operations into something approaching cosmological initiation. Whether one accepts every historical inference in the reconstruction is almost secondary to the importance of the question being asked: what conceptual and initiatory world originally surrounded these spirits before later occultism abstracted them into convenient components of a planetary magical system?
I also appreciate Acher's willingness to preserve contradiction. He does not romanticize Christian history, and there are passages in which the violence, fanaticism, and hostility of institutional Christianity toward magical traditions remain fully visible. Yet he simultaneously recognizes that remarkable technologies of contemplation developed within that same religious world. His idea of the "holy heretic" arises precisely from this tension: the mystic and magician meet at the point where direct experience of the divine begins to threaten mediated religious authority. It is a far subtler historical argument than the increasingly common habit of dividing Western esotericism into neatly opposed categories of liberating pagan magic and oppressive Christianity.
The result is a book that operates simultaneously as historical excavation, mystical manual, grimoiric reconstruction, and argument about what constitutes magical maturity. It rewards slow reading because its real subject is larger than either Christian mysticism or the Olympic spirits. Acher is asking what kind of human being must be cultivated if magic is to become something more profound than the acquisition of techniques.
There are many contemporary occult books that recover forgotten rituals. Far fewer attempt to recover the interior conditions that once made those rituals intelligible. Holy Heretics succeeds precisely because it understands that distinction.
The first half of the book is consequently far more important than a reader primarily interested in the Olympic spirits might initially expect. Acher moves through the Desert Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, hesychastic practice, Symeon the New Theologian, the Granum Sinapis, and the Theologia Germanica, among other currents, examining what happens when theology ceases to be merely propositional and becomes experiential. His treatment of Pseudo-Dionysian unknowing is particularly significant because it establishes one of the book's central premises: sophisticated magic requires the cultivation of faculties that cannot simply be reduced to intellectual comprehension, visualization, or the mechanical execution of ritual instructions. The magician must learn how to approach a mode of perception in which the ordinary structures of cognition become permeable.
This leads naturally into Acher's emphasis upon the heart, or heart-flame, as an organ of mystical and magical participation. Rather than presenting mysticism as a pious ornament attached to operative magic, he reverses the usual hierarchy and argues that certain forms of mystical training are prerequisites for advanced magical work. That proposition deserves considerably more attention within contemporary occultism. Ceremonial magic has accumulated increasingly elaborate technologies of invocation, correspondences, implements, and textual reconstruction, yet comparatively little attention is sometimes given to the transformation of the person performing them. Holy Heretics insists that the operator is ultimately the principal instrument.
The transition into the second half is therefore extremely well conceived. Acher's discussion of magical calling, the bell, Paracelsus, and the Olympic spirits grows out of everything preceding it rather than appearing as an unrelated grimoiric appendix. Of particular historical interest is his treatment of the little-known Arcanum arcanorum attributed to Paracelsus, which he translates and reconstructs through comparison with the wider Paracelsian and pseudo-Paracelsian corpus. The text concerns contact with the holy daimon and the seven Olympic spirits, and Acher follows its clues through alchemical preparation, astrological timing, and ritual procedure before presenting his restored Rite of the Olympic Spirit.
This is where the book becomes genuinely fascinating from the perspective of grimoire studies. The Olympic spirits are often encountered today almost exclusively through the Arbatel, with subsequent practitioners treating them as seven relatively discrete planetary intelligences available for invocation. Acher attempts something considerably more ambitious. His reconstruction places them within a Paracelsian cosmology in which the seven may ultimately be integrated into a greater Olympic Spirit, transforming the work from a sequence of planetary operations into something approaching cosmological initiation. Whether one accepts every historical inference in the reconstruction is almost secondary to the importance of the question being asked: what conceptual and initiatory world originally surrounded these spirits before later occultism abstracted them into convenient components of a planetary magical system?
I also appreciate Acher's willingness to preserve contradiction. He does not romanticize Christian history, and there are passages in which the violence, fanaticism, and hostility of institutional Christianity toward magical traditions remain fully visible. Yet he simultaneously recognizes that remarkable technologies of contemplation developed within that same religious world. His idea of the "holy heretic" arises precisely from this tension: the mystic and magician meet at the point where direct experience of the divine begins to threaten mediated religious authority. It is a far subtler historical argument than the increasingly common habit of dividing Western esotericism into neatly opposed categories of liberating pagan magic and oppressive Christianity.
The result is a book that operates simultaneously as historical excavation, mystical manual, grimoiric reconstruction, and argument about what constitutes magical maturity. It rewards slow reading because its real subject is larger than either Christian mysticism or the Olympic spirits. Acher is asking what kind of human being must be cultivated if magic is to become something more profound than the acquisition of techniques.
There are many contemporary occult books that recover forgotten rituals. Far fewer attempt to recover the interior conditions that once made those rituals intelligible. Holy Heretics succeeds precisely because it understands that distinction.
April 12, 2023
Artillery
I'm going to keep reading until this stuff is second nature.because this stuff really works.... I can't say it enough....if I started as a non believer; believe me I'm one now and forever more....
I'm going to keep reading until this stuff is second nature.because this stuff really works.... I can't say it enough....if I started as a non believer; believe me I'm one now and forever more....
August 21, 2026
This book has two parts. You can see that in the index, maybe even in the book cover, or on Scarlet Imprint's website. But what I mean to say is, it really does. The first half of the book is a profound exposition of a Christian, albeit heretical, mystic tradition. Beautifully written, with something like "daily exercises" for every reader not to do, as it usually happens with this sort of book. Guilt is important in Christian orthodoxy, though. Jokes aside, I found this half to be strong.
Not so much the second one, which feels more like an appendix about a ritual that not only appears to be somewhat disconnected from the tradition it described earlier in the book but whose modification in order to make it attainable has nothing to do with it. I'm talking narratively here, would be unable to say anything bad about neither intentions nor the ritual itself.
I'm writing this after the author (I think it was the late JSK who shared a joke on Facebook about "fraters") wrote a blog post explaining his change of mind about what the "angelic mind" is. And while it's hard to disagree, I think he is being too drastic. So yes, I do disagree, even if only a little bit. Because there is a middle ground. While the tradition exposed in the book is very clearly in one extreme, there is no need to run to the other extreme, which I think he does.
Not so much the second one, which feels more like an appendix about a ritual that not only appears to be somewhat disconnected from the tradition it described earlier in the book but whose modification in order to make it attainable has nothing to do with it. I'm talking narratively here, would be unable to say anything bad about neither intentions nor the ritual itself.
I'm writing this after the author (I think it was the late JSK who shared a joke on Facebook about "fraters") wrote a blog post explaining his change of mind about what the "angelic mind" is. And while it's hard to disagree, I think he is being too drastic. So yes, I do disagree, even if only a little bit. Because there is a middle ground. While the tradition exposed in the book is very clearly in one extreme, there is no need to run to the other extreme, which I think he does.
February 25, 2024
Frater Acher’s magical mind-space is a vast mountain, its slope reaching millennia into the past, its peaks high into the stratosphere... Holy Heretics is therefore, not surprisingly, a trail for truly experienced hikers (with an incredible ascent at the start), but the mysterious voice of Frater Acher, hovering mostly far ahead, sometimes besides the reader, is knowledgeable, humble and so, so generous. At the end of every leg of the journey, as the camp fire crackles and the eyes are at rest in the dark, a practical exercise is described that will transfuse the knowledge into the reader’s soul.
April 2, 2023
An interesting book that covers the historical thread of Christian Mysticism from the early Christian desert fathers of late antiquity Grecco-Egypt to the medieval Germanic practitioners Meister Eckhart and Paracelsus, to reclaim the European meditational-mystical tradition for those that do not ascribe to orthodox Christianity. I really enjoyed examining the historical trajectory of these evolving practices through Europe, despite finding some of his interpretations regarding them less compelling.
March 5, 2025
Wonderful research with examples and rituals. Completely fresh approach from anything else written on the subject.
March 27, 2024
A great read for those interested in the Olympic Spirits
Frater Acher provides some brilliant insights with this book. The only complaint I have is that it isn't longer! The exercises are "simple" but far from "easy" and it has given me a lot to tgink about in my long term study of the Arbatel.
Frater Acher provides some brilliant insights with this book. The only complaint I have is that it isn't longer! The exercises are "simple" but far from "easy" and it has given me a lot to tgink about in my long term study of the Arbatel.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews