ETTALAVAR! A Rosicrician's Weird Occult Tale –– by Paschal Beverly Randolph

The mixed-race occultist, Rosicrucian adept, spirit medium, novelist, publisher, activist, lecturer, world traveller, and sex-magician Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875) pursued his unique life’s quest almost entirely within the cultural underground, his zig-zagging career affected by every wild and contradictory current in motion there. Through the cultural ripples he began, his influence has suffused the Lunatic Fringe of American counterculture ever since, but has done so almost invisibly; he remains virtually unknown, his books only available in either expensive, deluxe limited editions, or un-edited transcriptions offering no context.

Randolph deployed his fearless weirdness, ontological rebelliousness, and refusal to internalize the banality of the world, against social and political oppression. It is no surprise that contemporary Surrealists are among the few who still explicitly celebrate his project today. His voice demands a hearing within the Fringe once again.

This chapbook contains Randolph’s original introduction and the first three and a half chapters of his novel Ravalette; or, the Rosicrucian’s Story, a bizarre hermetic hybrid of autobiography, occult novel, visionary tract, philosophical polemic, gothic fiction, esoteric parable, magickal treatise, and recruitment tool for his secret societies.

Annotated and with a critical preface by Olchar E. Lindsann.

48 pgs on folded 8.5”x11”. Dec., 2025/A.Da. 109/A.H. 195
$4.00 + s/h