Enchiridion Leonis Papae
When Marie Bosse was arrested in Paris, in January 1679, among her possessions was a copy of an unusual magical text. The Enchiridion Leonis Papae — Pope Leo's Handbook — has since acquired notoriety as a work of 'black magic', largely due to its association with the subsequent 'Affair of the Poisons', and the aura it acquired among 19th-century occult revivalists.
Emblemata
Alciato was a jurist and writer, born in Milan in 1492, he is the founder of the school of legal humanists, but his most famous work remains the Emblemata, first published in 1531. This emblem book combines Latin verses with accompanying woodcuts creating a new genre that reached enormous popularity.
The Dream God
The peculiar and startling effect of morphine on a person unaccustomed to its administration was happily illustrated in the instance of a gentleman to whom, under its influence (about three-eighths of a grain,) the dream to be related occurred.
Der Totentanz
The evocative work of Hans Holbein, known as Der Totentanz or The Dance of Death, stands as a testament to artistic mastery and social commentary.
The Cloud of Unknowing
The Cloud of Unknowing is a pillar of medieval mystic writing, written as a 'how to' guide for a first-hand encounter with God.
The approach is surprisingly ecumenical, with the author recommending that all that the candidate thinks he or she knows about God to be discarded before any attempt can made at the described exercise.
The Castle of Otranto
"The Castle of Otranto," written by Horace Walpole in 1764, is often regarded as the first Gothic novel. Its initial edition claimed to be a translation of a 1529 Naples manuscript found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in northern England.
The Black Pullet
Dismissed by A.E. Waite as the probable work of mischievous priests in Rome, The Black Pullet is a ‘novella of ideas’ grounded in the Egyptomania that gripped France in the 1820s.
A Season in Hell
A Season in Hell is an extended poem in prose written and published in 1873 by French writer Arthur Rimbaud.
Anatomy of Melancholy
This compelling and occasionally comic study of melancholy became cult reading in the 17th century and has inspired artists from Keats (who said it was his favourite book) over Cy Twombly to Nick Cave." Robert McCrum, The GuardianThe Anatomy of Melancholy was first published in 1621.
On Magic & The Occult
Scholars of poetry don’t often follow Yeats out onto the treacherous ground of his esotericism, and yet doing so is one of the main interpretative keys to the Yeatsian worldview.
Spiritus Mundi
In Spiritus Mundi, there is, according to William Butler Yeats, ''a universal memory and a muse of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer.'' To Yeats, Spiritus Mundi is the source of all ''images'' and ''symbols,'' a ''collective unconscious.''
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise
In 1793 Blake produced eighteen small engravings, which he called For Children: The Gates of Paradise, a series of emblems drawn from the large number of designs in Blake’s Notebook.
Religio Medici
Religio Medici is one of the most influential books to have come down to us from the seventeenth century; like Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, it is as much an inquiry into self as it is a wandering among the Liberal Arts, at whose heart is a simple truth: you can be rationally mystical, mystically rational, and a sincere friend to all.
The Esotericism of Dante
René Guénon, the founder of the Traditionalist, Perennialist movement of the 20th and 21st centuries, was involved in the study of the unorthodox, esoteric forms of many of the major world religions, specializing in their doctrines and the societies who follow them.
Ars Goetia
The Lemegeton - The Little Key of Solomon - is the name of a family of seventeenth and eighteenth-century manuscripts inspired by Johannes Weyer's Pseudomonarchia on the one hand, and Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft on the other, drawing upon Agrippa and Peter of Abano along the way.
On Christ and Antichrist
Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170s - 230s) was an enigma even to his contemporaries. His work was read and admired by the Church Fathers, yet they weren't sure who he was. Perhaps it didn't matter; the work spoke for itself. His reputation rested on his Refutation Omnium Haeresium, a far-ranging treatise on the religious controversies of his time.
De Occulta Philosophia: Volume 4 - The Fourth Book
This final section of "The Three Books of Occult Philosophy" includes new translations of extracts from Agrippa's work "De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum" (1530) and the potentially apocryphal "Liber Quartus de Occulta Philosophia" (1559), which also contains the Heptameron, or Elementa Magica de Petri de Abano.