Source books · Overview
Source books
The source books used across the site, from ceremonial magic and the grimoires to Qabalah, tarot, astrology and ritual: 370 books, filed by tradition and given labels for their role and evidence type. Free editions are linked where available; 214 can be read free today.
These books are older than the categories their later readers put them in. The Corpus Hermeticum was Greek philosophy written in Roman Egypt before Ficino's Latin made it Renaissance magic; the grimoires copied one another for four centuries before anybody printed them; and much of what the nineteenth-century revival called ancient reached it through translations that are themselves on this list. That is why a translation can be a book in its own right here.
Explore the books
- BooksSearch by title or author, then narrow the list by tradition, source role or public attention.
- Browse primary sourcesThe 296 books written from inside their traditions.
- Books with free editionsThe 214 books that currently link to a checked free edition.
- Everything in date orderOne list, oldest first, with no tradition headings.
What the two labels tell you
Role in the tradition says whether a book speaks from inside a tradition, shaped how others received it, or studies it from outside. That is an editorial judgment made here, one book at a time.
- Primary source
- Written from inside the tradition: scripture, revelation, a grimoire, a manifesto or a practical treatise. 296 books.
- Formative source
- A translation, edition, compilation or system that shaped how later readers received the tradition. 21 books.
- Secondary source
- A study of the tradition from outside it: history, scholarship, anthropology or reference. 53 books.
Second, public attention is a reproducible count, not an editorial judgment: the number of Wikipedia language editions with an article about the book, as Wikidata records them — Landmark 25 or more, Major 10–24, Notable 3–9, Minor 0–2. A book whose Wikidata entry could not be matched with confidence is Unmeasured, which is not the same as minor. Public attention does not measure a book's role in its tradition or the accuracy of its claims. A primary source can have limited public attention; a secondary study can be a landmark.
Where the links go, and how they were checked
Every link was fetched by a script before it was published, and a link that could not be checked was left out rather than guessed at. Project Gutenberg, esotericarchives.com, archive.org and Wikisource were read directly. sacred-texts.com refuses every script, so its links were checked against the Internet Archive's copy of each page, and the book says so. A book with no free edition says that too, and never borrows another book's link.
The paragraph under each book is quoted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0, from the revision it names; the one-line descriptions and the measurements are Wikidata's, which is public domain.