Our purpose
The purpose of the Adocentyn Athenaeum is to collect, preserve, describe, and make available the literature of four overlapping traditions:
- Pagan literature: the hymns, myths, and ritual texts of polytheistic and nature-centered religions, ancient and modern, together with the scholarship about them.
- Occult literature: the handbooks of the "hidden" arts, chiefly magic, astrology, alchemy, and divination.
- Esoteric literature: teachings written for the prepared reader, from the Hermetica and the Gnostic scriptures to Kabbalah and Theosophy.
- Mystical literature: firsthand accounts of union with, or knowledge of, the divine, and the manuals written to guide others toward it.
These are working definitions, and the borders leak. The Picatrix is occult, esoteric, and Pagan all at once. That is one reason the books belong under a single roof, and why we shelve them by the Four Gates of a single city.
What we do
- Keep a reading room open to anyone, without charge for day use.
- Catalog every volume by subject, tradition, period, and language, recording translator and edition.
- Write research guides that say plainly what each body of literature is and where to begin.
- Rescue the personal libraries of readers and practitioners before they are scattered. See Rescuing Personal Libraries.
- Preserve the newsletters, zines, and flyers that record how these traditions were actually lived.
- Publish a journal of essays on the history of these books and the craft of reading them.
- Hold an evening talk each quarter for holders of reader tickets.
What we are not
We are not a church, coven, lodge, or school, and we hold no rites. We do not sell books, tell fortunes, or offer spiritual direction. We do not lend, and we do not host or distribute scanned books. The keepers will gladly help you find a text and understand its history. Whether to believe it or practice it is entirely your own affair.
How we are run
The Athenaeum is an independent nonprofit educational library, governed by a board of three trustees and run from day to day by four volunteer keepers. No one is paid. Our income is the reader ticket, the occasional bequest, and the coffee tin on the desk. The accounts are read aloud at an open meeting held in the reading room each November.
A short history
- 2013 Three readers, a bookseller, a retired cataloger, and a small-press printer, combine their personal libraries, about 3,100 volumes in all, in a rented room above a sail loft.
- 2014 The Athenaeum is constituted as a nonprofit educational library with a board of trustees. The first shelf list is typed on index cards.
- 2016 The reading room opens to the public in a former ship chandlery.
- 2018 The family of Aurelio Farrow gives his library: about 1,200 volumes on alchemy and Hermetic philosophy, many annotated by their owner.
- 2019 The Four Gates shelving scheme replaces the original alphabetical arrangement.
- 2022 The periodicals room, known as the Waters, opens in the adjoining unit.
- 2024 The ten-thousandth volume is cataloged: a facsimile of the Mutus Liber, the wordless alchemical book of 1677.
- 2026 This website opens, with the research guides, the subject tree, the glossary, the chronology, and the first essays of the Journal.
Find out more
- The name Adocentyn and the legend behind it
- Collection policy: what we collect and where we stand
- Keepers and trustees: the people behind the desk
- Visit the reading room