Source books
Books
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27 books of 336 · oldest first
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 27
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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.
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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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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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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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c. 1529–30
Paragranum
Sets out the foundations of medicine: philosophy, astronomy and astrology, alchemy, and virtue.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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...
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undated
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undated
The Magical Calendar
esoteric calendar by Johann Baptist Grossschedel