Source books
Books
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All 336 books · showing 51–100 · oldest first
Jewish scripture and tradition 1
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1170–1180
Mishneh Torah
Maimonides's Mishneh Torah gathers Jewish law and philosophy into fourteen books. In the opening book, Sefer HaMada, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah gives a tenfold hierarchy of angels;...
Natural philosophy 1
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After 1248; probably completed 1261–1262
De mineralibus
Albertus Magnus studies stones, metals and intermediate substances through Aristotelian natural philosophy while recording alchemical and astrological theories current in the...
Hermetism 1
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1463
Latin translation of the Hermetic writings
Made philosophical Hermetism accessible to Renaissance Latin readers, and gave it a prestige built on a mistaken date.
Christian scripture and mysticism 1
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14th century
The Cloud of Unknowing
late 14th-century English mystical work
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 12
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appears c. 1176; incorporates older material
Sefer ha-Bahir
Fragmentary, deliberately obscure, and the earliest place the ten sefirot appear as divine potencies.
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1273
Book of Redemption
An early prophetic work articulating his understanding of revelation.
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1280
Life of the World to Come
One of his clearest manuals of ecstatic technique involving letters and divine names.
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1280
Secrets of the Torah
A commentary on Maimonidean philosophy interpreted through mystical methods.
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c. 1290
Sha'arei Orah
The most systematic medieval account of the divine names and their sefiroth. Its ten gates climb from Adonai in Malchut to Ehyeh in Keter, and each opens with a verse containing...
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Late 13th–early 14th century
Tikkunei Zohar
Seventy interpretations of the first word of Genesis, and the home of the Patach Eliyahu — the passage beginning 'Elijah opened' that maps the sefirot onto the parts of a body,...
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principally late thirteenth century; circulated from the 1280s
Zohar
A vast mystical commentary on the Torah concerned with the sefirot, divine masculine and feminine dimensions, cosmic symbolism, evil, souls and mystical interpretation.
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1285–86
Treasury of the Hidden Eden
An extensive synthesis of his prophetic Kabbalah.
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c. 1285–88
Book of the Sign
A highly visionary prophetic work.
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1291
Words of Beauty
Among the latest datable products of his career.
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1548, first printed 1592
Pardes Rimonim
Cordovero's systematisation of Zoharic Kabbalah into thirty-two gates, written before Luria's teaching reorganised the field. It is the most orderly pre-Lurianic presentation of...
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Late 16th century; the Arizal's teaching as recorded by Vital
Pri Etz Chaim
The Lurianic manual of practice — the intentions to be held during prayer and the festivals, arranged as gates. Gate 22, the Gate of the Omer Count, is the source of the scheme...
Islamic esotericism 5
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before 1186
Intimations
Integrates Peripatetic reasoning with his developing illuminationist perspective.
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before 1191
Temples of Light
A shorter metaphysical exposition emphasising the human soul and luminous realities.
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completed 1186
Philosophy of Illumination
His central systematic work: reality understood through hierarchies of light.
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composed and revised over decades
The Meccan Openings
A gigantic encyclopedic treatment of cosmology, spiritual practice, mystical states, prophecy, imagination and metaphysics.
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c. 1230
The Ringstones of Wisdom
A concentrated presentation of divine wisdom through a sequence of prophets.
Astrology 2
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unfinished at his death
Disputations against Divinatory Astrology
Attacks deterministic judicial astrology, despite his earlier enthusiasm for other forms of occult philosophy.
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1555
Les Prophéties
literary work by Nostradamus
Alchemy 4
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1100
Turba Philosophorum
alchemical work
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c. 1529–30
Paragranum
Sets out the foundations of medicine: philosophy, astronomy and astrology, alchemy, and virtue.
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c. 1531
Opus Paramirum
Develops his distinctive medical and alchemical understanding of disease.
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first form 1595; expanded 1609, posthumous
Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom
One of the great emblematic books of Christian alchemy, in which the laboratory and the oratory are the same room.
Grimoires and ritual magic 4
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13th century
Liber Juratus
medieval grimoire
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manuscript tradition, medieval to early modern
Clavicula Salomonis
Consecrated tools, planetary hours, and the pentacles that give the tradition its visual signature.
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1575
Arbatel of Magic
The seven Olympic spirits, their seals and their governance of historical periods, framed with unusual restraint.
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1577
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
appendix to De praestigiis daemonum (1577) by Johannes Wier
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 18
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completed 1474; printed 1482
Platonic Theology
A massive defence of the immortality of the soul and a Christianised Platonic metaphysics.
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1486
900 Conclusions
Propositions covering philosophy, theology, magic and Kabbalah, arguing among other things that properly understood magic and Kabbalah confirm Christianity.
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written 1486
Oration on the Dignity of Man
Originally conceived as an introduction to his proposed disputation.
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1487
Apology
His defence of the condemned theses.
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1489
Heptaplus
An elaborate sevenfold interpretation of the biblical creation narrative.
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1489
Three Books on Life
The most overtly occult of his works: medicine, astrology, music, planetary influence, images, substances, and methods by which the learned can bring themselves into harmony...
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written c. 1499; first printed 1606
Steganographia
It appears to teach the summoning of spirits for communication across distances, yet much of its opening can also be decoded as cryptographic instruction. The magic may conceal...
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1518, posthumous
Polygraphia
A substantial cryptographic work presenting numerous systems of secret writing.
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1530
On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Arts and Sciences
A sceptical or penitential critique of human knowledge, including the occult arts.
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draft 1510; Book I printed 1531; complete 1533
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Divides magic into elemental or natural, celestial or mathematical, and intellectual or ceremonial, and synthesises correspondences, astrology, number, Hebrew names, angels,...
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1558
Propaedeumata Aphoristica
Astrological and cosmological aphorisms exploring celestial influences.
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1564
Monas Hieroglyphica
His famous enigmatic synthesis of planetary, elemental, alchemical and mathematical symbols into a single glyph.
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1570
Mathematical Preface to Euclid
Not an occult manual, but part of Dee's belief that mathematics could open the order hidden in nature.
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1582
Cantus Circaeus
Uses magical imagery and memory technique in a philosophically charged setting.
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1582
On the Shadows of Ideas
A complex art-of-memory work in which combinatorial images become instruments for organising mind and reality.
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principally 1580s; partially published 1659 by Meric Casaubon
Spiritual and angelic diaries
Records of the angelic sessions: voices, letter tables, a purported angelic language and the cosmology disclosed through them.
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c. 1590
On Bonds in General
A disturbing and brilliant analysis of the forces by which minds, desires and persons can be bound or influenced.
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c. 1590, manuscript
On Magic
Examines the different meanings of magic and develops his theory of bonds, sympathies and spirit.
Witchcraft and demonology 1
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1487
Malleus Maleficarum
treatise on the prosecution of witches