Classic Occult Books to Bring Out Your Inner Warlock
The study of the occult is the pursuit of hidden truths: powers that, once recognized, can be used for spiritual enlightenment or Earthly power, depending on the seeker. Is there anything to the mystical arts? Well, that’s not for us to decide, but if you’re curious about the world of magic and mysticism, these books are a great place to start.
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Add to BookshelfThe Kybalion: Centenary Edition
by Three Initiates
In the grand scale of things, The Kybalion isn’t what you’d call a particularly ancient text: The first edition of this mystical work appeared on shelves in 1910. That’s practically yesterday, especially in the world of occult writings. However, the ideas contained therein — the mind and the universe mirror each other (“as above, so below”), all things have their opposites, and that there’s a universal spiritual truth — are much older, dating back to a sixth century philosopher known as Hermes Trismegistus. The anonymous authors of The Kybalion combined the wisdom of Hermes with the popular New Thought philosophies of their era to create a self-help book with the trappings of an occult tome. The Kybalion is in the public domain, but this collector’s edition is bound in “vegan leather”, with gold stamping, gold-foil page edges, and an accompanying red ribbon place marker. It will make a great conversation piece for your home library.
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$24.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Hermetica
by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
While The Kybalion is a nice introduction to the basics of esoteric philosophy, any reader with a deeper interest in the topic should have a look at The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs. This work offers the most important writings from the Hermetic corpus translated into plain English. The Hermetica is probably one of the most influential works in the history of Western magic, and its ideas have been bouncing around for many centuries. Once you become familiar with their core precepts, you’ll begin to see them reflected in much of the mystical arts, philosophy, and literature of the last thousand years.
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$15.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic
by Eliphas Lévi
Eliphas Lévi’s The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic is one of the 19th century’s great works of occult philosophy, syncretizing centuries of mystical belief and what was then the cutting edge of science to create an erudite but approachable work. While this isn’t the first English translation of Lévi’s masterpiece, it is considered to be the most accurate, and comes complete with the illustrations and symbols that accompanied the original work.
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$23.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Secret Doctrine
by H.P. Blavatsky and Michael Gomes
Helen Petrovna Blavatsky, supposedly the daughter of a Russian aristocratic family, claimed to have traveled the Earth in search of mystical wisdom before coming into contact with the “Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.” According to Blavatsky, the Masters shared with her various spiritual truths, including the real story of the Earth and the rise of humanity. She, in turn, wrote all of it up in a two-volume book called The Secret Doctrine. The Secret Doctrine became an enormously influential book in the occult circles of the 19th and 20th century, and also inspired some rather great pulp writers, like Robert E. Howard.
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$17.95Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Voynich Manuscript
by
The Kybalion, The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, and The Secret Doctrine might all seem a little “out there,” but they’re nothing compared to the sustained weirdness of The Voynich Manuscript. Written in code and chock full of weird drawings, this 15th century oddity has stumped would-be interpreters for centuries. Is it a guide to herbalism? A work on astrology? A handbook for women’s health? A sorcerer’s grimoire? No one truly knows, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to figure it out.
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$37.99Buy from Other Retailers:
