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Teach me: Occultism
Richard_Dastardly
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Reading Lovecraft and unusuccessfully trying to get my friends to play a Cthulu RPG has gotten me interested in learning about real, bonified occultism. Yeah, I'm well aware this encompasses a very broad specrum of heresies, and I'd like to ease myself in toes-first.
I'm open to any good source materials, be it tomes of e-tomes. I have a gift card to Borders so, yeah, cost is of no concern*.
*Up to $50 dollars.
I'm open to any good source materials, be it tomes of e-tomes. I have a gift card to Borders so, yeah, cost is of no concern*.
*Up to $50 dollars.
Richard_Dastardly on
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http://www.amazon.com/Where-Park-Your-Broomstick-Witchcraft/dp/0684855003/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1250511275&sr=8-2
Should I thank you or feel insulted?
Either way I will hex you after I read this book.
What kind of reading are you looking to do? A history of occultism? A history of belief in magic? A history of religious cults? Heresies within the Catholic church? All of those are very, very broad topics in and of themselves. Or are you actually asking for a book to guide you in casting spells and cursing your parents when they make you clean your room?
Ah.
I'm talking about alchemy, magic, demonology. Pretty much anything listed on the wikipedia here.. I'd like to understand the history, practices, theory, etc.
I've looked on Google books, but a lot of the public domain stuff seems a bit thick. I'd like to ease myself in first.
That's probably going to be your best bet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/777_and_other_Qabalistic_writings is probably the best one to start with.
There's a big difference here between primary texts and secondary sources. I'd stick with secondary sources out of a respect for your time, and you can always pick something up later.
The Hermetic / Theosophic traditions are what we think of as modern occultism. There are lots of strands intertwining this with renaissance and post-renaissance efforts to replace scholasticism with something else. This is best exemplified by Giordano Bruno, who is worth reading about - starting with his Wiki is a good idea. "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition" is the classic text, but "Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science" is good too.
Reading about John Dee would be agood idea too - there are a lot of academic texts about him, like Bruno; http://www.amazon.com/John-Dees-Occultism-Exaltation-Traditions/dp/0791462234/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250524822&sr=8-8 is one example.
The problem is that Crowley and Blavatsky have less historical impact and get less attention from real historians, so you get a mixture of books and texts that speak to new-agey types wanting enlightenment or pulp reading for the reader seeking titillation.
First of all, I am not a Magus or Necromancer, but please be careful with these things.
Here you are some reading:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/abr/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire
http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiromancy
I went through a huge occultism phase awhile back, and the best book to sum up the theory of magic I've found is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Liber-Null-Psychonaut-Introduction-Chaos/dp/0877286396
Basically, it strips away most of the ceremony and trappings that magic has in various traditions and boils it down to the raw theory behind it. I'm only interested in the subject, I've never actually tried to exercise anything in the field, but it was far and above the most intriguing book on the subject that I've read.
Thanks for the ideas, people. With all your help I'll be casting METEO in no time. I promise I'll use my powers responsibly.
Is Anton Lavey of any significance? I read the Satanic Bible when I was a teenager, but I wonder if he was maybe the Ringo of the occult world.
LaVey isn't exactly a respected figure but he's no less significant than any other 'occult' figure; i.e. he also plagiarized a bunch of earlier ideas that he only half-understood and cobbled them together into a bunch of mystick gobbeldegook and then led a very sad, powerless life.
Brad Steiger releases books which are essentially collected accounts of interactions with weird phenomena. This is a good start: http://www.amazon.com/Out-Dark-Complete-Beings-Beyond/dp/1575668963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250545766&sr=8-8
You can find more by looking around amazon a bit.
I think John Keel posits some interesting ideas that link occultism with UFOs and other weird events. The Mothman Prophecies is a good place to start and is nothing like the movie.
http://www.amazon.com/Mothman-Prophecies-John-Keel/dp/0765341972/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250545961&sr=8-2
This might also be a good place to start:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Lies-Disinformation-Magick-Occult/dp/097139427X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250546030&sr=1-1
J.G. Frazier's The Golden Bough is kind of dry but overall pretty interesting.
Colin Wilson's The Occult was really interesting.
Couple of years ago I read Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur and that was pretty good too.
I'm with MSP though. The creatures/entities make for the best reading.
PSN: Broichan
It's not exactly something you'll read straight through, but it's a great reference tool.
It's circa 1879 I think? Fun stuff. I actually saw an original two volume set when I lived in Providence, RI, but it was $750.
This is the fucking book.
Thank you, Rubacava!
An entertaining free read is The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz, a sort of autobiographical account of one contemporary person's involvement with a particular occult group. This one, the OTO, combines Crowley-style occultism with Freemason traditions and a bit of Thelemic "magick" thrown in. It's a sort of Dan Brown trifecta.
This particular account is so wonderful because it is so well-placed. When dealing with modern occultism, you're likely to get people on the spectrum from merely weird to Gene Ray Timecube-style crazy. The author here is a rare blend: both extremely coherent and also a true believer. So you get exacting practical details about rituals, beliefs, and people, combined with this sort of suspended-disbelief accounting of exactly which demons were summoned through which interdimensional portals.
What's interesting is that the delusion is so fully integrated into ordinary, mundane life. They drive their Hondas and Toyotas up to the temple, have a Black Mass, summon a few demons and open a few portals, and then go home and make spaghetti. They might get hassled by the phone company over a late payment and then do a quick ritual to fix it up. There's also heavy helpings of interpersonal drama of the nerdy kind - the sort you find in WoW guilds, tight-knit SCA cliques, LARPing groups, and other sorts of endeavors where relationships rise and fall based entirely on fictitious events.
I have provided links to this and other books, but if you didn't see it, here you are:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/index.htm
Edit: +1 for casual early 20th century racism!