Source books
Books
Start by searching for a title or author. Open Filters to narrow the list by tradition, the role a book played, whether a free edition is available, or how much public attention it receives. Last, choose date or name order. Every choice stays in the address, so you can bookmark the result or send the same list to someone else.
192 books of 336 · showing 51–100 · oldest first
Jewish scripture and tradition 1
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1886–1903
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature
The standard dictionary of rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic.
Greek and Roman mysteries 1
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1890
The Golden Bough
1890 non-fiction work by James George Frazer
Hermetism 1
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1885
Gnosticism 1
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1887
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 3
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Early 17th century; printed Peremyshl 1896–1898
Ohr HaChammah
A commentary on the Zohar assembling the readings of the Safed kabbalists. It is cited here for one thing it does that its sources do not: it states the mapping of the seven...
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1887
The Kabbalah Unveiled
Translation of portions of Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin Kabbala Denudata, making Zoharic material accessible in English.
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English translation, 1887
Sepher Yetzirah
Helped make a foundational Kabbalistic text available to English-speaking occultists.
Astrology 2
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1619
Harmonices Mundi
book by Johannes Kepler
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1647
Christian Astrology
William Lilly’s large practical manual of horary and natal astrology, including concise accounts of the planets and twelve houses.
Alchemy 3
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printed London, 1597
The Mirror of Alchemy
A short English treatise that defines alchemy, gives the theory that every metal is made of quicksilver and sulphur, and describes the colours the work passes through.
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1841
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
1841 collection of historic anecdotes about human follies by Charles Mackay
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1850
A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
The book that began the modern reading of alchemy as an inner discipline rather than a chemistry. Atwood and her father withdrew and burned most of the edition soon after it...
Grimoires and ritual magic 6
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manuscripts mainly seventeenth century
Lemegeton
Five books under one attribution, beginning with the catalogue of seventy-two spirits that later came to overshadow the rest.
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1668
Le Petit Albert
18th-century grimoire
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probably eighteenth century in recognisable form
Grimorium Verum
Spirit hierarchies, seals and conjurations, framed as a Solomonic inheritance it does not have.
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eighteenth–nineteenth-century textual tradition
The Grand Grimoire
The pact with Lucifuge Rofocale, and the apparatus for compelling it.
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1801
The Magus
Book by occultist Francis Barrett
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1889
The Key of Solomon the King
An influential English edition of the Solomonic grimoire tradition.
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 6
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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.
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1834
Lives of the Necromancers
1834 book by William Godwin
Witchcraft and demonology 2
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1597
Daemonologie
book by King James VI/I of Scotland/England about demons
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1862
La Sorcière
essay by Jules Michelet
Rosicrucianism 3
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1616
The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
A bizarre, symbolically dense initiatory-alchemical romance involving a royal wedding, trials, death and regeneration.
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1670
Comte de Gabalis
17th-century French occult text
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1887
Freemasonry 4
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1827
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1866
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1872
Morals and Dogma
book by Albert Pike
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1882
Christian theosophy and Swedenborg 8
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1621
The Signature of All Things
Perhaps his most directly esoteric book: visible nature contains signatures revealing invisible spiritual realities.
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1749–1756
Secrets of Heaven
A large spiritual interpretation of Genesis and Exodus built through his doctrine of correspondences.
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1758
Heaven and Hell
His best-known account of the afterlife: heaven and hell as states corresponding to inward loves rather than external rewards and punishments.
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1763
Divine Love and Wisdom
Systematic metaphysics of God, creation and spiritual reality.
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1764
Divine Providence
A study of divine governance and human freedom.
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1766
Apocalypse Revealed
A spiritual interpretation of Revelation.
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1768
Conjugial Love
Spiritual sexuality and the correspondence of marriage.
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1771
True Christian Religion
The great synthesis of his later theology.
Tarot 2
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1888
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1889
The Tarot of the Bohemians
Integrates Tarot with Kabbalah, numerology and esoteric cosmology.
French occultism 2
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two parts, 1854 and 1856
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic
His masterpiece. Twenty-two chapters in each half implicitly parallel the Tarot trumps, building a theory and practice of ceremonial magic.
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1860
History of Magic
An influential but highly mythologised history linking ancient mysteries, Kabbalah, magic and Christian esotericism.
The Golden Dawn 2
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1887
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c. 1888
Book T
Book T is the Golden Dawn's central instructional document on tarot. It specifies card designs and connects the twenty-two trumps with Hebrew letters and Tree paths, the...
Theosophy and its descendants 3
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1877
Isis Unveiled
A sprawling attack on materialism and dogmatic Christianity, coupled with a defence of occult and ancient wisdom traditions.
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1888
The Secret Doctrine
Her cosmological synthesis, presented as a reading of the Stanzas of Dzyan: cycles of evolution, root races, reincarnation and hidden spiritual hierarchies.
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1889
The Key to Theosophy
A much more accessible question-and-answer exposition of Theosophical teaching.