Here are the erotic writings of a Jewish lesbian who met fame in Germany before and during the Nazi era.

Marie-Madeleine was a German Jew, lesbian poet and novelist whose eroticism and love for morphine was revealed in many of her shocking, sensational, and bestselling books of the early twentieth century. Born Gertrud Günther, and starting at age 15 she wrote over 46 books until 1932 when Nazis condemned her work as degenerate. In 1943 she entered a sanatorium for morphine addiction where she died a mysterious death while under the care of Nazis doctors.

Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine contains many of this fascinating woman’s works, translated for the first time into English, and also contains Stephen J. Gertz’s Foreword and Dr. Amy Shapiro’s Afterword explaining why Marie-Madeleine has become a rediscovered heroine of lesbian and drug literature. Fascinating period images from Marie-Madeleine’s lost literature and career supplement Dr. Ronald Siegel’s amazing rediscovery.

“Everything one does in life occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke [Cannabis, marijuana, opium] is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.” -Jean Cocteau

Among the native tribesmen in the Rif region of Morocco who have been smoking a cannabis preparation known as kif for over 800 years, it is accepted as part of the magic and sorcery in everyday life. This seemingly supernatural effect is neither physical nor psychological. Rather, it is an unconscious cognitive process involving perception, thinking and learning. The cognitive process was given the name “Kif Wisdom.”

In Timothy Wilfred Coakley’s novel Keef: A Story of Intoxication, Love & Death, written in the witchy style of an Edgar Allan Poe horror story, the narrator, a kif smoker, takes us through his supernatural search for love powered by his “Kif Wisdom” growing from his chronic smoking. At maturity, the wisdom allows him to see that the path to love goes beyond death.

Coakley’s novel, in the form of an illustrated memoir, was heralded as one of the most important publishing events of 1897. It made the list with H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man and Rudyard Kipling’s Captain Courageous. Since average marijuana potency is now approaching kif levels, this book about toxic kif experiences may more applicable to today’s audience than those of 1897.

Dr. Ronald K. Siegel is a psychopharmacologist and former research professor at UCLA School of Medicine, author of several books including the acclaimed Intoxication, numerous journal articles based on translations of lost and forgotten works in drug literature, and currently curator of the RKS Library of Drug Literature.

Here is a lost illustrated masterpiece, a book so rare and sought-after that only two copies can be found in world libraries. For the first time this classic work on a forgotten Arabian legend has been translated into English. This illustrated novel is presented as a “pictorial opera” of love, hashish, and tragedy in the time of Victorian erotica, and it contains the first known illustrations and descriptions of true hashish hallucinations. This high quality case-bound and slipcased limited edition reproduces all fifty original erotic illustrations and colorful extras by illustrator Gottfried Sieben, and it is limited to only 418 copies, all signed by Ronald K. Siegel. This book will appeal to readers of Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s Hasheesh Eater, Charles Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradise, High Times magazine, and marijuana users everywhere.

Fritz Lemmermayer was born in Vienna in 1857, became a writer, poet, and journalist, and maintained close relationships with Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner.

Ronald K. Siegel is a recognized world authority on drugs and drug literature. A former research professor at UCLA, he is the author of numerous books including the critically acclaimed Intoxication. Siegel was featured in several Time magazine cover stories, and has been a consultant to presidential commissions and the World Health Organization. He is currently curator of the RKS Library of Drug Literature, one of the largest such libraries in the world.

“Some novels die and justifiably remain dead. A few are resurrected by bookish saviors and, re-examined, rise to deserved new life. Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer is one such literary Lazarus.” — Stephen J. Gertz