Source books
Books
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214 books of 370 · showing 51–100 · oldest first
Jewish scripture and tradition 1
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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.
Hermetism 1
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1885
Gnosticism 1
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1887
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 5
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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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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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1887
The Kabbalah Unveiled
Translation of portions of Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin Kabbala Denudata, making Zoharic material accessible in English.
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English translation, 1887
Sepher Yetzirah
Helped make a foundational Kabbalistic text available to English-speaking occultists.
Astrology 2
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1619
Harmonices Mundi
book by Johannes Kepler
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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.
Alchemy 3
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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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1841
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
1841 collection of historic anecdotes about human follies by Charles Mackay
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1850
A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
The book that began the modern reading of alchemy as an inner discipline, withdrawn and burned by its author within months of publication.
Grimoires and ritual magic 7
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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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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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1668
Le Petit Albert
18th-century grimoire
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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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eighteenth–nineteenth-century textual tradition
The Grand Grimoire
The pact with Lucifuge Rofocale, and the apparatus for compelling it.
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1801
The Magus
Book by occultist Francis Barrett
Renaissance magic and Christian Cabala 6
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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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1834
Lives of the Necromancers
1834 book by William Godwin
Witchcraft and demonology 2
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1597
Daemonologie
book by King James VI/I of Scotland/England about demons
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1862
La Sorcière
essay by Jules Michelet
Rosicrucianism 3
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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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1670
Comte de Gabalis
17th-century French occult text
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1887
Freemasonry 5
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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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1827
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1866
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1872
Morals and Dogma
book by Albert Pike
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1882
Christian theosophy and Swedenborg 9
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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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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
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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1885 English translation
Jacob Boehme: His Life and Teaching, or Studies in Theosophy
An English translation of Martensen's theological study of Jacob Böhme, combining a biography with an extended account of his theosophy.
Tarot 1
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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'.
French occultism 2
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two parts, 1854 and 1856
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic
His masterpiece. Twenty-two chapters in each half implicitly parallel the Tarot trumps, building a theory and practice of ceremonial magic.
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1860
History of Magic
An influential but highly mythologised history linking ancient mysteries, Kabbalah, magic and Christian esotericism.
The Golden Dawn 1
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1887
Theosophy and its descendants 1
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1877
Isis Unveiled
A sprawling attack on materialism and dogmatic Christianity, coupled with a defence of occult and ancient wisdom traditions.