Scope
Begin in the Tower. A good encyclopedia article and a bibliography will save a week of wandering, and a general history will tell you which of the books at the gates are primary sources, which are scholarship, and which are wishful thinking. The Tower stands in the middle of the reading room, and nothing in it leaves the central table.
| Class | What is shelved there |
|---|---|
| T 1 | Dictionaries and encyclopedias of religion, mythology, magic, and symbolism |
| T 2 | Bibliographies, library and booksellers' catalogs, and guides to manuscripts |
| T 3 | General histories of magic, science, religion, and philosophy |
| T 4 | General critical and skeptical literature: works that range across several of the arts at once |
| T 5 | Language aids: grammars and dictionaries for Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Old Norse, and Middle English; guides to old handwriting |
| T 6 | Atlases, chronologies, and biographical dictionaries |
Landmark works we still reach for
These are older works, all by authors no longer living, that shaped the study of this literature. Each needs to be read with its date in mind. For current scholarship, ask at the desk.
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A History of Magic and Experimental Science Lynn Thorndike. Eight volumes, 1923 to 1958. T 3
Still the most detailed survey of learned magic and its dealings with science from the Roman Empire to the seventeenth century. Thorndike read the manuscripts himself, and his footnotes remain a map of them.
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The Golden Bough James George Frazer. First edition 1890, third edition in twelve volumes 1906 to 1915, abridged 1922. T 3
A vast comparative study of magic, sacred kingship, and the dying god. Anthropologists abandoned its evolutionary scheme long ago, but its influence on twentieth-century literature and on modern Paganism is hard to overstate. Read it as a source for that influence.
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Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition Frances A. Yates. 1964. T 3
The book that made Renaissance Hermetism a subject of mainstream history. Later scholars have qualified many of its claims. None has replaced its sweep.
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Ritual Magic E. M. Butler. 1949. T 3
A literary historian's account of the ritual texts from antiquity to the Faust books, readable and still sound in outline.
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The Book of Ceremonial Magic Arthur Edward Waite. 1911, revising his Book of Black Magic and of Pacts of 1898. T 2
A descriptive survey of the printed grimoires with long extracts. Waite disapproved of his subject and says so often, but for decades this was the only guide to it in English.
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Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism Gershom Scholem. 1941. T 3
The founding work of the modern academic study of Kabbalah, tracing Jewish mysticism from the Merkavah visionaries to Hasidism.
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Mysticism Evelyn Underhill. 1911. T 3
A study of the nature and development of spiritual consciousness, organized around the stages of the mystic way and illustrated chiefly from the Christian contemplatives.
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An Encyclopaedia of Occultism Lewis Spence. 1920. T 1
An early one-volume encyclopedia, uneven and dated, but useful for the names and notions current in its day.
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Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science Nandor Fodor. 1933. T 1
The standard reference of its time for Spiritualism and psychical research: mediums, phenomena, and investigators.
Opposing views
The critical tradition is as old as the arts it criticizes. Following our collection policy, a work written against a single art is shelved beside the works it answers. Cicero's dialogue On Divination, written in 44 BCE, stands with divination at L 5. Pico della Mirandola's Disputations against Divinatory Astrology of 1496 stands with astrology at L 3. Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584 stands with the witchcraft treatises at L 7.
Class T 4 holds the general critical literature, which ranges over several of the arts at once. The shelf list also gathers every critical work under a single heading, so that the whole tradition can be surveyed from the Tower, and a reader looking for astrology will find its opponents as well as its advocates.
Asking for help
If you are not sure where to start, tell the keeper at the desk what you want to know, not which book you think you need. See also Starting Your Research.