Source books
Books
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All 370 books · showing 51–100 · oldest first
Jewish scripture and tradition 4
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early 10th century
Book of Definitions
Short definitions of philosophical terms, and the earliest Jewish statement of a Neoplatonic descent from a First Cause through intellect and soul.
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written c. 1045; Latin translation c. 1150
Fons Vitae
A dialogue on matter and form in which a divine Will stands between an unknowable God and everything that proceeds from him. Written in Arabic, lost in the original, and...
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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;...
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completed in the Land of Israel, c. 1267–1270
Commentary on the Torah
A mainstream biblical commentary carrying brief kabbalistic allusions, flagged as 'by way of truth' and deliberately left unexplained.
Natural philosophy 1
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After 1248; probably completed 1261–1262
De mineralibus
Albertus Magnus studies stones, metals and intermediate substances through Aristotelian natural philosophy while recording alchemical and astrological theories current in the...
Hermetism 2
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earliest secure forms medieval, probably Arabic
Emerald Tablet
A very short alchemical text that eventually produces the formula usually paraphrased as 'as above, so below'. Its legendary attribution to ancient Hermes is much older than the...
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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.
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 13
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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.
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early 13th century
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah
The earliest kabbalistic commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that can be attached to a named teacher. It does not point at the Text this site holds for Sefer Yetzirah: that row is the...
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first half of the 13th century
Commentary on the Ten Sefirot
Thirteen questions and answers, written to defend the sefirot against the objection that a perfectly simple God can have no parts. The defence is Neoplatonic and the vocabulary...
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1273
Book of Redemption
An early prophetic work articulating his understanding of revelation.
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1280
Life of the World to Come
One of his clearest manuals of ecstatic technique involving letters and divine names.
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1280
Secrets of the Torah
A commentary on Maimonidean philosophy interpreted through mystical methods.
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Late 13th–early 14th century
Tikkunei Zohar
Seventy interpretations of the first word of Genesis, and the home of the Patach Eliyahu — the passage beginning 'Elijah opened' that maps the sefirot onto the parts of a body,...
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principally late thirteenth century; circulated from the 1280s
Zohar
A vast mystical commentary on the Torah concerned with the sefirot, divine masculine and feminine dimensions, cosmic symbolism, evil, souls and mystical interpretation.
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1285–86
Treasury of the Hidden Eden
An extensive synthesis of his prophetic Kabbalah.
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c. 1285–88
Book of the Sign
A highly visionary prophetic work.
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late 13th century
Sha'arei Orah
Gates of Light: the ten sefirot expounded through the divine names, taken from the lowest gate upward. The source this site reads for the names on the Jewish tree.
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1291
Words of Beauty
Among the latest datable products of his career.
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written 1548; printed Kraków 1592
Pardes Rimonim
Orchard of Pomegranates: thirty-two gates systematising the whole inheritance. Its seventh gate enumerates the twenty-two channels this site's Hermetic tree draws, and then...
Islamic esotericism 6
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Arabic, probably second half of the tenth century
Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm
A large handbook of astral magic, carried into Renaissance occultism through its Latin translation as the Picatrix.
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before 1186
Intimations
Integrates Peripatetic reasoning with his developing illuminationist perspective.
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before 1191
Temples of Light
A shorter metaphysical exposition emphasising the human soul and luminous realities.
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completed 1186
Philosophy of Illumination
His central systematic work: reality understood through hierarchies of light.
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composed and revised over decades
The Meccan Openings
A gigantic encyclopedic treatment of cosmology, spiritual practice, mystical states, prophecy, imagination and metaphysics.
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c. 1230
The Ringstones of Wisdom
A concentrated presentation of divine wisdom through a sequence of prophets.
Astrology 2
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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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1555
Les Prophéties
literary work by Nostradamus
Alchemy 4
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1100
Turba Philosophorum
alchemical work
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written 1471; printed 1591
The Compound of Alchymy
The work in twelve gates, from calcination to projection, in verse.
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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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c. 1531
Opus Paramirum
Develops his distinctive medical and alchemical understanding of disease.
Grimoires and ritual magic 2
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13th century
Liber Juratus
medieval grimoire
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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.
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 14
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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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Basel, 1494
De Verbo Mirifico
On the Wonder-Working Word: a dialogue arguing that the name of Jesus is the pronounceable form of the Tetragrammaton. Christian Cabala's founding argument, and its founding...
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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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Augsburg, 1516
Portae Lucis
A free Latin translation of part of Sha'arei Orah, and the book through which Christian Europe first read a kabbalistic classic in its own language. Its title page shows a man...
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Hagenau, 1517
De Arte Cabalistica
On the Art of Kabbalah: three books of dialogue, and the first full European account of the subject as a subject. It is where a Latin reader could find out what the sefirot were...
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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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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.
Witchcraft and demonology 1
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1487
Malleus Maleficarum
treatise on the prosecution of witches