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.
41 books of 336 · oldest first
Egyptian religion and magic 1
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1901
Jewish scripture and tradition 4
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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.
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1891–1906
A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament
The standard Hebrew lexicon of the Hebrew Bible, based on Gesenius.
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1901–1906
The Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Encyclopedia is an early twentieth-century reference work whose signed articles gather biblical, rabbinic and mystical source trails. Its accounts of variant angel...
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1939
Greek and Roman mysteries 6
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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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c. 211–229 CE
Roman History
Cassius Dio's history includes an early explanation of the seven-day planetary week and the planetary-hour order used to derive it.
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1890
The Golden Bough
1890 non-fiction work by James George Frazer
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1891
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1903
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1911
Natural philosophy 1
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undated
Gnosticism 3
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1887
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1900
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undated
Refutation of All Heresies
work by Hippolytus of Rome
Christian scripture and mysticism 1
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1911
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 6
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1913
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1913
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1926
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1929
The Holy Kabbalah
A massive if idiosyncratic history and interpretation of Kabbalah from a mystical-Christian perspective.
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1974
Kabbalah
Scholem's one-volume survey of Kabbalah: a historical essay on the basic ideas followed by encyclopaedia entries on texts, figures and terms.
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undated
Astrology 1
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1912
Alchemy 6
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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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1914; English translation 1917
Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism
A psychoanalytic reading of an alchemical parable, published as Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism and later retitled Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts.
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1944; English translation 1953
Psychology and Alchemy
Jung's reading of alchemical imagery as a projection of psychic processes, and the book through which most twentieth-century readers met alchemy at all.
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2001
Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
The collection containing Principe and Newman's “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy”, the essay that argues the spiritual reading is a Victorian and...
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undated
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undated
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 2
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1834
Lives of the Necromancers
1834 book by William Godwin
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1978
The Complete Enochian Dictionary
A linguist's dictionary and grammatical description of the angelic material, and the standard reference for it. Laycock counts about 250 words in the corpus, over half of them...
Witchcraft and demonology 5
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1862
La Sorcière
essay by Jules Michelet
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1921
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
Argues from witch-trial material for an organised pre-Christian religion surviving into the early modern period.
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1931
The God of the Witches
A more popular restatement of the witch-cult thesis centred on a horned god.
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undated
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undated
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
1830 book by Sir Walter Scott
Rosicrucianism 2
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1887
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1907
Freemasonry 1
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undated
The Golden Dawn 1
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1887
Modern witchcraft 1
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1989
The Rebirth of Witchcraft
Her memoir and internal history of the twentieth-century witchcraft revival.