Source books
Books
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All 336 books · showing 101–150 · oldest first
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 1
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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...
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 5
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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
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 2
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volumes from 1617 into the 1620s
History of the Two Worlds
An illustrated encyclopaedia in which the greater world and the human body mirror one another.
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1834
Lives of the Necromancers
1834 book by William Godwin
Witchcraft and demonology 1
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1597
Daemonologie
book by King James VI/I of Scotland/England about demons
Rosicrucianism 4
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1614
Fama Fraternitatis
Tells the story of Christian Rosenkreutz and announces a hidden fraternity devoted to universal reform.
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1615
Confessio Fraternitatis
Expands the ideological programme and announces a coming transformation of religion, philosophy and science.
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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
Freemasonry 3
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1723; revised 1738
The Constitutions of the Free-Masons
Regulations, charges, and a legendary history of Masonry reaching back into remote antiquity.
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delivered in versions c. 1736–37
Ramsay's Discourse
Links Freemasonry imaginatively with chivalric and crusading traditions.
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1827
Christian theosophy and Swedenborg 18
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written 1612; circulated in manuscript; first printed 1634, posthumous
Aurora
An unfinished visionary account of God, creation, nature and the emergence of opposites.
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1619
The Three Principles of the Divine Essence
Develops his dynamic conception of divine manifestation and nature.
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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.
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composed c. 1770–72; first complete printed edition 1899
Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings
The theological foundation of his system. It was not conceived as a public occult handbook, and publication came more than a century after his death.
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1775
Of Errors and Truth
His first major work, published as 'The Unknown Philosopher'. Humanity is fallen from an original spiritual condition and capable of restoration.
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1782
Tableau naturel
Develops his account of humanity, nature and the divine order.
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1790
The Man of Desire
A devotional and mystical work expressing the soul's longing for reintegration.
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1792
Ecce Homo
A meditation on spiritual regeneration and the true human condition.
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1790s
The New Man
An account of inward rebirth.
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1800
The Spirit of Things
Attempts to read nature as a spiritual revelation.
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1802
Ministry of the Man-Spirit
One of his mature statements concerning humanity's spiritual vocation.
Mesmerism and Spiritualism 4
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1766
Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu
His medical dissertation on planetary influences and a universal physical fluid.
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1779
Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
The foundational statement of animal magnetism.
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1857
The Spirits' Book
A structured series of questions and answers on God, spirits, reincarnation, morality and the afterlife.
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1861
The Mediums' Book
A practical and theoretical manual on mediumship, manifestations and methods of testing communications.
Tarot 4
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nine volumes, 1773–1782; the Tarot essay in volume VIII, 1781
Le Monde primitif
Volume VIII contains the famous Tarot essay asserting an Egyptian origin and a 'Book of Thoth'.
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installments 1783–1785
Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées Tarots
The first systematic published instructions for divinatory Tarot. It assigns upright and reversed meanings and integrates astrology and elemental correspondences.
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1785
Fragment sur les hautes sciences
Further develops his 'higher sciences'.
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c. 1790
Cours théorique et pratique du Livre de Thot
A late synthesis of his Tarot theories.
French occultism 3
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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.
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1861
Key of the Great Mysteries
Develops his occult philosophy of correspondences and universal equilibrium.