Chronology of the Literature

A timeline of the books discussed in our guides and collection pages, from the Pyramid Texts to the late twentieth century, with one small entry of our own at the end. It records when works were written, translated, printed, or found, since in this literature the date a text became available often matters as much as the date it was composed.

Early dates are approximate and many are disputed. We give the dating most widely accepted by scholars and mark uncertain ones with "about".

1. About 2350 BCE The earliest Pyramid Texts are carved in the pyramid of Unas at Saqqara: the oldest substantial body of religious writing known.
2. Second millennium BCE The celestial omen series Enuma Anu Enlil is compiled in Mesopotamia.
3. About 700 BCE Hesiod composes the Theogony.
4. 410 BCE Date of the earliest known Babylonian birth horoscope.
5. 44 BCE Cicero writes On Divination.
6. First century CE Manilius writes the Astronomica. The earliest Greek alchemical treatise is composed under the name of Democritus.
7. About 100 to 300 The treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum are written in Roman Egypt. In the same centuries many of the Greek magical papyri are copied, the Chaldean Oracles appear, and the Gnostic scriptures are composed.
8. Second century Ptolemy writes the Tetrabiblos, Vettius Valens the Anthology, Artemidorus the Oneirocritica, and Apuleius The Golden Ass.
9. About 180 Irenaeus writes Against Heresies.
10. About 300 Porphyry publishes the Enneads of Plotinus. Iamblichus writes On the Mysteries. Zosimos of Panopolis writes on alchemy.
11. About 350 The Nag Hammadi codices are copied, and later buried.
12. 362 The emperor Julian writes his Hymn to King Helios.
13. About 500 An unknown author writes the Mystical Theology under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite.
14. Eighth to tenth centuries The alchemical corpus attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan is written in Arabic. The earliest known versions of the Emerald Tablet appear.
15. About 848 Abu Ma'shar writes the Great Introduction to Astrology.
16. Tenth or eleventh century The Ghayat al-Hakim, later known as the Picatrix, is compiled in Muslim Spain.
17. 1144 Robert of Chester translates the Book of the Composition of Alchemy, by tradition the first alchemical work in Latin.
18. Later twelfth century The Sefer ha-Bahir appears in Provence.
19. About 1220 Snorri Sturluson writes the Prose Edda in Iceland.
20. 1256 to 1258 The Picatrix is translated from Arabic into Castilian at the court of Alfonso X. The Latin version, with its city of Adocentyn, follows.
21. About 1270 The chief manuscript of the Poetic Edda is written.
22. About 1280 to 1300 The Zohar begins to circulate in Castile.
23. 1310 Marguerite Porete is burned at Paris. Her Mirror of Simple Souls survives without her name.
24. Later fourteenth century The Cloud of Unknowing is written, and Julian of Norwich records her Revelations.
25. 1440s The first records of tarot cards appear in northern Italy.
26. 1463 Marsilio Ficino translates the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin. It is printed in 1471.
27. 1486 Pico della Mirandola publishes his Nine Hundred Theses. Heinrich Kramer completes the Malleus Maleficarum.
28. 1517 Johannes Reuchlin publishes On the Art of the Kabbalah.
29. 1533 Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy is printed in full.
30. 1550 The Rosarium Philosophorum is printed at Frankfurt.
31. 1558 to 1560 The Zohar is printed at Mantua and Cremona.
32. 1563 Johann Weyer publishes De praestigiis daemonum.
33. 1584 Reginald Scot publishes The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Giordano Bruno publishes his Italian dialogues in London.
34. 1614 The Fama Fraternitatis, the first Rosicrucian manifesto, is printed. Isaac Casaubon redates the Hermetic writings to the early Christian era.
35. 1617 Michael Maier publishes Atalanta Fugiens.
36. 1647 William Lilly publishes Christian Astrology.
37. 1650 to 1652 The Corpus Hermeticum and Agrippa's Occult Philosophy appear in English. Elias Ashmole publishes the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum.
38. 1677 The Mutus Liber is published at La Rochelle. The first volume of the Kabbala Denudata appears.
39. 1758 Emanuel Swedenborg publishes Heaven and Hell.
40. 1781 Antoine Court de Gebelin declares the tarot to be an ancient Egyptian book.
41. 1801 Francis Barrett publishes The Magus.
42. 1835 Jacob Grimm publishes Deutsche Mythologie. The first edition of the Kalevala appears.
43. 1854 to 1856 Eliphas Levi publishes Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.
44. 1877 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky publishes Isis Unveiled.
45. 1889 S. L. MacGregor Mathers publishes the first English edition of The Key of Solomon.
46. 1890 James George Frazer publishes the first edition of The Golden Bough.
47. 1899 Charles Godfrey Leland publishes Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.
48. 1902 William James publishes The Varieties of Religious Experience.
49. 1909 to 1911 The tarot deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith is issued, followed by A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Evelyn Underhill publishes Mysticism.
50. 1921 Margaret Murray publishes The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.
51. 1923 to 1958 Lynn Thorndike publishes A History of Magic and Experimental Science in eight volumes.
52. 1928 to 1931 Karl Preisendanz publishes the collected Greek magical papyri.
53. 1941 Gershom Scholem publishes Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
54. 1944 C. G. Jung publishes Psychology and Alchemy.
55. 1945 The Nag Hammadi codices are found in Upper Egypt. The first volumes of the critical edition of the Corpus Hermeticum appear.
56. 1948 Robert Graves publishes The White Goddess.
57. 1954 Gerald Gardner publishes Witchcraft Today.
58. 1964 Frances A. Yates publishes Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.
59. 1977 The Nag Hammadi library is published complete in English.
60. 1979 Margot Adler publishes Drawing Down the Moon.
61. 2013 Three readers on the Pacific coast pool their books and found the Adocentyn Athenaeum.

Reading the timeline

Three moments stand out. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, translation from Arabic gave Latin Europe its alchemy, its astrology, and the Picatrix. In 1463 a Greek manuscript and a Florentine translator returned the Hermetic dialogues to circulation. And in 1945 a jar of papyrus books found in Egypt let the Gnostics speak for themselves for the first time in sixteen centuries. Each time, the shape of the whole tradition changed because of what could suddenly be read.

For the works themselves, see the research guides and the collection pages.