What it is
The French word occultisme came into use in the 1840s and was made famous by Eliphas Levi in the 1850s. It named something new: the conviction that magic, astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and the tarot were not scattered superstitions but the surviving fragments of one ancient science, older than the churches and wiser than the laboratories, which could now be recovered and taught. Historians call the century that followed the occult revival.
Its writers were not the heirs of an unbroken tradition, whatever they believed. They were readers. They worked from Agrippa and the grimoires, from the Christian Kabbalah of the Renaissance, from the Rosicrucian legend, from mesmerism and Spiritualism, and from the first European translations of Hindu and Buddhist scripture, and out of these they built systems that were genuinely their own. Some founded orders and societies to teach them. Most of what is now called Western esotericism reached the twentieth century through their books.
Where to begin
Read the introduction to Levi's Dogme et Rituel, in English as Transcendental Magic, for the voice of the whole movement. Then read Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy, a short book of questions and answers, and Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defence to see how the ideas were put to practical use. For the critics, read Rene Guenon.
Paris: Levi and the French occultists
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Histoire de la magie and La Clef des grands mysteres Eliphas Levi (Alphonse-Louis Constant). French. 1860 and 1861. D 5
A former seminarian and radical pamphleteer, Levi turned to magic in his forties and wrote its history as a single secret doctrine running from Egypt to the Rosicrucians. His Dogme et Rituel of 1854 to 1856 is described in the guide to Grimoires and Ceremonial Magic. These later books are calmer and, for many readers, better.
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Mission de l'Inde en Europe Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. French. 1886. D 5
Describes a hidden underground kingdom of the masters in Asia, called Agarttha, from which the true government of the world is directed. Saint-Yves had the book printed and then destroyed nearly every copy. It was reissued after his death and supplied a legend still in circulation.
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Traite methodique de science occulte Papus (Gerard Encausse). French. 1891. D 5
A physician's thousand-page summa of occultism: Kabbalah, astrology, magic, the tarot, and the history of secret societies, set out with diagrams like a medical textbook. Papus was the great organizer of the Paris scene. His Tarot of the Bohemians is in the guide to Divination and Tarot.
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Au seuil du mystere and Le Serpent de la Genese Stanislas de Guaita. French. 1886, and 1891 onward. D 5
A young poet turned scholar of the "accursed sciences", whose library of occult books was famous in its day. The second work, on the serpent of Genesis and the powers of evil, was unfinished at his death in 1897.
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Amphitheatre des sciences mortes Josephin Peladan. French. Seven volumes, 1892 to 1911. D 5
Novelist, critic, and self-styled magus, Peladan wrote these handbooks on how to become a mage, a fairy, and an initiate, and in 1892 to 1897 staged annual exhibitions of idealist and symbolist art in Paris. His novels are described in The Occult in Fiction.
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Le Theosophisme and L'Erreur spirite Rene Guenon. French. 1921 and 1923. D 5
A former student of the Paris occultists turns on them, and on the Theosophists and the Spiritualists, as counterfeits of a primordial tradition that he believed survived only in the great religions. His later books founded the school of thought called Traditionalism.
Theosophy and Anthroposophy
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The Secret Doctrine Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Two volumes, 1888. D 5
A commentary on the "Stanzas of Dzyan", verses said to come from an ancient Tibetan book unknown to scholarship, setting out the evolution of the cosmos and of humanity through seven root races. The central text of modern Theosophy. Its racial scheme is part of the historical record and has had an ugly afterlife. For Isis Unveiled of 1877, see Esoteric Literature.
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The Key to Theosophy Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. 1889. D 5
The teaching in questions and answers, written for the general reader. The best way in.
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Esoteric Buddhism A. P. Sinnett. 1883. D 5
A newspaper editor in India presents the teaching he said he had received in letters from two Mahatmas, adepts living in Tibet. The book made Theosophy known in England and gave many readers their first, and very peculiar, idea of Buddhism.
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The Perfect Way Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. 1882. D 5
An esoteric Christianity of the soul's many lives, drawn partly from Kingsford's dreams and visions. Kingsford was one of the first Englishwomen to take a degree in medicine, and a fierce opponent of vivisection.
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Light on the Path Mabel Collins. 1885. D 5
A short book of aphorisms on the path of the disciple, written in a state the author described as dictation. It has never been out of print.
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Thought-Forms Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. 1901. D 5
Colored plates of the shapes that thoughts and emotions were said to take when seen by clairvoyants. Read by painters as well as occultists, and often cited in histories of abstract art.
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Theosophy and An Outline of Occult Science Rudolf Steiner. German. 1904 and 1910. D 5
The Austrian philosopher's own account of the human being, the higher worlds, and the path of knowledge. Steiner left the Theosophists in 1913 and called his teaching Anthroposophy. Its influence on schools, farming, and medicine has outlasted its cosmology.
London and the magical orders
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The Kabbalah Unveiled S. L. MacGregor Mathers. 1887. D 3
An English version of three Zoharic texts from Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin, with a long introduction. It and Mathers's editions of the grimoires were the working library of the magical orders of the 1890s. Mathers, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Edward Waite, and Aleister Crowley all belonged to the same order, founded in London in 1888, whose rituals and teaching papers were published by Israel Regardie in 1937 to 1940 and are shelved at D 6.
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The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis) Aleister Crowley. Received in Cairo in April 1904. Printed 1909. D 5
Three chapters that Crowley said were dictated to him by a voice over three days, proclaiming a new age and the law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." The sacred text of the religion he founded, and the key to everything else he wrote.
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The Equinox Aleister Crowley, editor. Ten numbers, 1909 to 1913. D 5
A twice-yearly review of "scientific illuminism" in which Crowley printed rituals, instructions, poetry, fiction, and attacks on his enemies, including much of the order material he had sworn to keep secret. For 777 and Magick in Theory and Practice, see the guides to Kabbalah and Grimoires and Ceremonial Magic.
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The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy Austin Osman Spare. 1913. L 2
An artist's private system of magic, in which a desire is written out, its letters combined into a sigil, and the sigil forgotten so that it may work in the unconscious. Ignored for decades, it became the seed of chaos magic in the 1970s.
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A Vision W. B. Yeats. 1925, revised 1937. D 5
A system of history and personality built on the phases of the moon and the turning of two interpenetrating gyres, from the automatic writing of the poet's wife, George Yeats, begun four days after their wedding in 1917. Strange, beautiful, and essential to the late poems.
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Psychic Self-Defence Dion Fortune (Violet Firth). 1930. D 5
A study of "psychic attack" and how to resist it, drawn partly from the author's own experience and from her work in psychotherapy. Practical, sensible in tone, and much imitated. Her Mystical Qabalah is in the guide to Kabbalah.
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The Secret Teachings of All Ages Manly P. Hall. Los Angeles, 1928. D 5
A huge illustrated folio summarizing the Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic traditions as one philosophy, published by subscription when its author was twenty-seven. An encyclopedia of the revival's beliefs about the past, not of the past itself.
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Initiation into Hermetics (Der Weg zum wahren Adepten) Franz Bardon. German. 1956. L 2
A Czech teacher's ten-step course of training in concentration, breath, the elements, and the "magical equilibrium", written to be worked through rather than read. Widely translated, and the backbone of many solitary practices.
America
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Art Magic and Ghost Land Edited by Emma Hardinge Britten. 1876. D 5
Two books by an English medium and lecturer who had grown dissatisfied with the Spiritualism she had done so much to spread. The first presents a theory of spirits and magic said to come from an anonymous European adept. The second is the adept's romantic autobiography. Who, if anyone, he was remains a puzzle.
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Eulis! The History of Love Paschal Beverly Randolph. 1874. D 5
A physician, trance medium, and novelist of mixed race, born in New York, who taught that sexual love and magic mirrors could open the soul to the higher worlds. One of the most original American occultists, and a source for several later orders.
For The Kybalion of 1908, a New Thought book that borrows the name of Hermes, see the guide to Hermetic Literature.
Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way
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Tertium Organum P. D. Ouspensky. Russian, 1912. English, 1920. D 5
A Russian journalist's argument, written before he met Gurdjieff, that consciousness and the fourth dimension hold the key to a mystical understanding of the world. A sensation in English translation.
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In Search of the Miraculous P. D. Ouspensky. Published after his death, 1949. D 5
Ouspensky's record of Gurdjieff's teaching in Russia between 1915 and 1918: the human being as a machine, the possibility of waking, the Ray of Creation, and the Enneagram. Far clearer than anything Gurdjieff wrote himself.
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Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson G. I. Gurdjieff. 1950. D 5
An immense allegorical epic in which a being from another world explains the folly of humanity. Written to be difficult, and read aloud in groups for exactly that reason.
A darker branch
In German-speaking lands the revival had a branch that combined runes, Theosophy, and fantasies of racial descent into what was later called Ariosophy. Its leading writers were Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels. We keep these books for their documentary value under our policy on difficult material, and we shelve beside them the study that best explains them:
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The Occult Roots of Nazism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. D 5
A careful history of the Ariosophists and their small influence on the Nazi movement, which also dismantles the sensational myths of an occult Third Reich found in popular books since the 1960s.
Older studies
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The Flight from Reason and The Occult Establishment James Webb. 1971 and 1976. D 5
The first serious histories of the revival in English. Webb read the occult as a reaction against the crisis of modernity and traced its threads into politics and the arts. Opinionated, witty, and full of material.
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Ritual Magic E. M. Butler. 1949. T 3
The closing chapters bring a literary historian's history of the ritual texts down to Eliphas Levi and his successors. See Reference and Bibliography.
Things to watch for
- Ancient wisdom. The revival's writers believed they were recovering an ancient tradition. Historically they were making a new one from old materials, often brilliantly. Read their histories as evidence of what they believed about the past.
- Masters and letters. Much of this literature rests on claims of contact with hidden teachers, by letter, voice, or vision. The claims were disputed in their own day and are not something a library can settle. We record who made them and when.
- Published secrets. The private papers of the orders were printed by defectors, enemies, and successors, often in different versions. Note which version you are reading.
- Pen names. Eliphas Levi was Alphonse-Louis Constant, Papus was Gerard Encausse, and Dion Fortune was Violet Firth. Initiates also took Latin mottoes. Catalogs file them in different ways.
- Difficult material. Some books of the period carry racial and political theories that are false and were used to harm. Read them as documents of their time.
On the shelves
The literature of the revival is shelved at the North Gate in class D 5, with Spiritualism and psychical research. The histories and published rituals of the orders are in D 6, and the practical handbooks stand with the grimoires at the South Gate in L 2. The occult magazines of the period, where many of these books first appeared in parts, are in the Waters. Related guides: Rosicrucians and Christian Theosophy, Spiritualism and Psychical Research, and The Occult in Fiction.