Source books
Books
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37 books of 336 · oldest first
Mesopotamian divination and magic 1
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assembled mainly 2nd–1st millennia BCE
Enūma Anu Enlil
A vast series of celestial omens correlating astronomical phenomena with earthly events. One major root of what eventually becomes judicial astrology.
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;...
Greek and Roman mysteries 5
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c. 175–180 CE
The True Doctrine
Celsus's anti-Christian treatise survives through Origen's third-century refutation. Book VI preserves a report of a seven-gated Mithraic ladder whose gates are assigned both...
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undated
The Golden Verses
literary work
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undated
The Life of Apollonius of Tyana
work by Philostratus
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undated
The Orphic Hymns
collection of 87 short religious poems composed in either the late Hellenistic or early Roman era
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undated
The Sibylline Oracles
collection of oracular utterances in Greek hexameter, containing Hellenistic/Roman mythology with Jewish, Gnostic and Christian stories
Natural philosophy 1
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c. 350 BCE
On Generation and Corruption
Aristotle explains change among the four simple bodies through the contrary qualities hot and cold, dry and moist.
Hermetism 1
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1908
The Kybalion
book
Gnosticism 1
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undated
Pistis Sophia
gnostic text in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and the disciples
Neoplatonism 3
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late second century CE
The Chaldean Oracles
Fragmentary theurgical revelation on the soul's ascent, the paternal intellect, and the rites by which the two are joined.
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written c. 253–270; arranged and published by Porphyry c. 301
Enneads
Plotinus wrote separate treatises rather than a book called The Enneads. Porphyry arranged fifty-four of them into six groups of nine.
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c. 270–300
Isagoge
A work of logic whose medieval influence reached far beyond occultism.
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 2
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Final redaction 5th–6th century CE; Byzantine or Babylonian provenance contested
3 Enoch
Third Enoch is a central source for the tradition in which Enoch is elevated and transformed into Metatron. It develops Metatron's heavenly offices and titles, including Prince...
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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.
Astrology 2
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second century CE
Tetrabiblos
The most influential astrological text ever written, and the reason Western astrology has the shape it has. It sets out the signs, their elements and modalities, the houses of...
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1555
Les Prophéties
literary work by Nostradamus
Alchemy 1
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1100
Turba Philosophorum
alchemical work
Grimoires and ritual magic 6
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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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1577
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
appendix to De praestigiis daemonum (1577) by Johannes Wier
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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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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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1898
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
Introduced English occultists to the Abramelin system: prolonged purification, communion with the Holy Guardian Angel, and subsequent command of spirits.
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undated
Testament of Solomon
Old Testament pseudepigraphical work ascribed to King Solomon
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 3
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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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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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1564
Monas Hieroglyphica
His famous enigmatic synthesis of planetary, elemental, alchemical and mathematical symbols into a single glyph.
Witchcraft and demonology 1
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1597
Daemonologie
book by King James VI/I of Scotland/England about demons
Rosicrucianism 1
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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.
Freemasonry 1
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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.
Mesmerism and Spiritualism 1
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1857
The Spirits' Book
A structured series of questions and answers on God, spirits, reincarnation, morality and the afterlife.
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 Voice of the Silence
A devotional and mystical text presenting an ideal of spiritual compassion in strongly Buddhist-influenced vocabulary.
Thelema 1
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received 8–10 April 1904; first printed 1909
The Book of the Law
The short scripture of Thelema, centred on the maxim 'Do what thou wilt'. Crowley said the text was dictated by a non-human intelligence called Aiwass.
Modern witchcraft 1
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1899
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches
book by Charles Godfrey Leland