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.
All 370 books · showing 101–150 · oldest first
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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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1575
Arbatel of Magic
The seven Olympic spirits, their seals and their governance of historical periods, framed with unusual restraint.
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1577
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
appendix to De praestigiis daemonum (1577) by Johannes Wier
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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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1597
Daemonologie
book by King James VI/I of Scotland/England about demons
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printed 1597
The Mirror of Alchemy
A short English treatise, printed under Roger Bacon's name, that defines alchemy, derives every metal from quicksilver and sulphur, and names the colours of the work.
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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...
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compiled from Luria's teaching, c. 1573–1620; printed 1782
Pri Etz Chaim
Vital's arrangement of the Lurianic teaching on prayer and the commandments, and the source this site cites for the seven weeks of the Omer.
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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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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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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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1619
Harmonices Mundi
book by Johannes Kepler
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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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1647
Christian Astrology
William Lilly’s large practical manual of horary and natal astrology, including concise accounts of the planets and twelve houses.
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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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Rome, 1652–1654
Oedipus Aegyptiacus
Three volumes claiming to decipher the hieroglyphs, which it does not. It carries the engraved Sephirothic Tree that became the standard diagram of Western occultism — the...
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1668
Le Petit Albert
18th-century grimoire
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1670
Comte de Gabalis
17th-century French occult text
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Sulzbach 1677; Frankfurt 1684
Kabbala Denudata
Kabbalah Unveiled: Latin translations of Zoharic and Lurianic material with dictionaries and commentary. The channel through which the nineteenth-century revival, and then the...
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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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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
Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu
His medical dissertation on planetary influences and a universal physical fluid.
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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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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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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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1779
Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
The foundational statement of animal magnetism.
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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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1782
Tableau naturel
Develops his account of humanity, nature and the divine order.
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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.
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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.