Reading List: The Primary Texts

There are more books about this subject than anyone could read, and most of them are books about other books. The quickest way to an informed judgment is to go to the sources. The list below gives the primary texts of the Western esoteric tradition in a workable order, with a note on what each one is and how demanding it is. All are old enough to be in the public domain in their original languages, and most can be found in more than one English translation.

Choosing an edition

For any ancient or Renaissance text, look for a translation made directly from the original language by someone who explains their choices, with an introduction that gives the date and setting, and notes on difficult passages. Be cautious with translations made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many are readable and some are beautiful, but they often rest on poor texts and import the translator's own doctrines. If an old version is all you can find, read it, and read it knowing what it is.

Avoid editions that have been abridged, modernized or rearranged without saying how. A text that has been improved is no longer evidence of anything.

Begin here

Four short works that can be read in an evening each and reread for years.

The Emerald Tablet

Introductory. One page. The founding text of alchemy and the source of the maxim as above, so below. Our text and commentary is a place to start. Learn it by heart.

Corpus Hermeticum, treatise I: Poimandres

Introductory. Ten pages. The visionary account of creation, the descent of the human being and the way of return. Everything else in the Hermetic literature assumes it.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Introductory. Seventy one lines. A rule of life in verse from the Pythagorean tradition, of uncertain date, containing the instruction for the evening review. Short enough to memorize.

The Kybalion (1908)

Introductory. A short book. The source of the seven principles. Clear and stimulating. Read it as a modern work of its period and not as a transcript of ancient teaching.

The Hermetic core

Corpus Hermeticum, complete

Intermediate. The seventeen treatises. After the first, read XIII, IV, V and XI, then the rest in any order. Expect disagreement between treatises. See our guide to the texts.

Asclepius

Intermediate. The longest Hermetic dialogue. Read for the praise of the human being, the passage on the temple statues and the lament for Egypt.

The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth

Intermediate. A few pages. The Coptic Hermetic text found near Nag Hammadi. The only surviving description of a Hermetic initiation from the inside.

The Stobaean fragments, especially the Kore Kosmou

Intermediate. Excerpts preserved in a late ancient anthology. The Kore Kosmou gives a mythological account of the making of souls.

The philosophical background

The Hermetic writers breathed the air of Platonism. These works show where their ideas came from and where they went.

Plato, Timaeus

Demanding. The dialogue on the making of the cosmos by a divine craftsman, the world soul, and the human being as a small copy of the whole. The single most important source of Western cosmology.

Plotinus, Enneads, the treatise On Beauty

Intermediate. A few pages. The most approachable piece by the founder of Neoplatonism. On the ascent of the soul from beautiful things to beauty itself.

Iamblichus, On the Mysteries

Demanding. The classical defense of theurgy. Why ritual, and not thinking alone, unites the soul with the gods. Fundamental for the theory of ceremonial magic.

The Renaissance synthesis

Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)

Introductory. A long essay. The manifesto of the Renaissance magus. The human being has no fixed nature and may become whatever they choose. It opens by quoting the Asclepius.

Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life (1489)

Intermediate. The third book, on obtaining life from the heavens, is the most careful account ever written of natural and planetary magic, by the first translator of the Hermetica.

Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533)

Intermediate. Very long. The encyclopedia of Renaissance magic: natural, celestial and ceremonial. The origin of most later tables of correspondence. Best consulted by chapter, not read straight through.

John Dee, The Hieroglyphic Monad (1564)

Demanding. Short. Twenty four theorems on a single composite symbol. Deliberately obscure, and a remarkable demonstration of how much a sign can be made to hold.

Picatrix

Demanding. The great medieval manual of astral magic. Read it for its philosophy of talismans and its picture of the sage. Many of its recipes are repellent or poisonous and none should be attempted.

Qabalah

Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation

Intermediate. A few pages. The early Hebrew text on creation through ten numbers and twenty two letters, and the root of the Tree of Life. It belongs to the Jewish tradition and should be read with that in mind.

Alchemy

Zosimos of Panopolis, the Visions

Intermediate. A few pages. Dream narratives by the earliest alchemist whose work survives in quantity. Strange, violent and unforgettable.

Rosarium Philosophorum, the Rosary of the Philosophers (1550)

Intermediate. A collection of sayings accompanied by twenty woodcuts showing the union, death and rebirth of king and queen. The classic picture series of the work.

Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1617)

Intermediate. Fifty emblems, each with an epigram, a discourse and a piece of music. Made to be looked at, read and sung: alchemy as a work of art.

The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616)

Introductory. A short novel. An allegorical romance in seven days, full of humor and marvels, in which the narrator attends a royal wedding that is also an alchemical operation.

The nineteenth century revival

Eliphas Levi, The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic (1856)

Intermediate. The book that founded modern occultism. Eloquent, theatrical and unreliable on matters of history, it gave the tradition its present vocabulary, including the four powers of the magus and the association of the tarot with the Hebrew letters.

For context

The Greek Magical Papyri

Intermediate. A collection of working spells, hymns and rituals from Roman Egypt, the world in which the Hermetica were written. Invaluable as evidence of what ancient magic actually looked like. For study, not for use.

Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos

Intermediate. The standard ancient textbook of astrology, by the greatest astronomer of antiquity. Sober, systematic and the basis of the later tradition.

A first year of reading

For a student following the course of study, the following is enough for twelve months, and more would be too much.

1. The Emerald Tablet, until known by heart
2. The Golden Verses
3. The Poimandres, three times
4. Corpus Hermeticum, treatises XIII, IV, V and XI
5. Pico's Oration
6. The Asclepius
7. One further work of your own choosing

For advice on how to read such books, see the essay how to read an old book of magic.