Egypt, myths and legends by Lewis Spence
Epiphany by Owen St. Victor
The Present Age by W.J. Stein
The principle of reincarnation by W.J. Stein
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky by George Steiner
Atlantis and Lemuria by Rudolf Steiner
The Book with Fourteen Seals by Rudolf Steiner
The Concepts of Original Sin and Grace by Rudolf Steiner
The Dead Are With Us by Rudolf Steiner
Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St Matthew by Rudolf Steiner
Egyptian myths and mysteries by Rudolf Steiner
The Evolution of Consciousness, and The Sun Initiation of the Druid Priest and his Moon-Science by Rudolf Steiner
From Symptom to Reality in Modern History by Rudolf Steiner
Inner Impulses of Evolution by Rudolf Steiner
The Karma of Untruthfulness vols I and II by Rudolf Steiner
Karmic relationships Vols I and II by Rudolf Steiner
Life Between Death and Rebirth by Rudolf Steiner
Manifestations of Karma by Rudolph Steiner
Occult History by Rudolf Steiner
The occult movement in the nineteenth century by Rudolf Steiner*
The Occult Significance of Blood by Rudolf Steiner
The Origins of Natural Science by Rudolf Steiner
Reincarnation and Karma by Rudolf Steiner
Results of spiritual investigation by Rudolf Steiner
The Temple Legend by Rudolf Steiner
Three Streams in Human Evolution by Rudolf Steiner
Verses and Meditations by Rudolph Steiner
Wonders of the World by Rudolf Steiner
The World of the Desert Fathers by Columba Stewart
Witchcraft and Black Magic by Montague Summers
Conjugal Love by Emanuel Swedenborg
Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg
Conversations with Eternity by Robert Temple*
He Who Saw Everything — a translation of the Gilgamesh epic by Robert Temple
Mysteries and secrets of magic by C.J.S. Thompson
The Elizabethan World Picture by E.M.W Tillyard
Tracks in the Snow — studies in English science and art by Ruthven Todd
The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno
Primitive Man by Cesar de Vesme
Reincarnation by Guenther Wachsmuth
Raymund Lully, Illuminated Doctor, Alchemist and Christian Mystic by A.E. Waite
Gnosticism by Benjamin Walker
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon by Peter Washington
Tao, the Watercourse Way by Alan Watts
Secret Societies and Subversive Movements by Nesta Webster
The Serpent in the Sky by John Anthony West
The Secret of the Golden Flower by Richard Wilhelm
Witchcraft by Charles Williams
The Laughing Philosopher: a life of Rabelais by M.P. Willocks
Are These the Words of Jesus? by Ian Wilson
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda*
Mysticism sacred and profane by R.C. Zaehner
This book is the result of some twenty years of reading. Often I’ve read a book which has yielded only a sentence in my own. So the above is a selective biography. I should perhaps declare a small interest here. In the case of some of these books, I have not only read them, I have commissioned and published them too. I had originally intended that the notes would be almost as long as the text, but then the text is twice as long as intended. Perhaps it’s for the best. One more tiny, wafer-thin bit of information and this book might have exploded like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life.
It’s a peril of writing a book so wide-ranging that even as you’re going to press, new books are published which you need to read and take into account. I’d just like to mention Philip Ball’s brilliant The Devil’s Doctor, a biography of Paracelsus and The Occult Tradition by David S. Katz. Both these books show great ‘negative capability’ when it comes to the question of whether or not occult phenomena are real. Barry Strauss’s recent book on The Trojan War bolsters the idea that it was a real historical event.
I’ve put an asterisk by the books — not the obvious ones, not The Brothers Karamazov, for example — that I recommend as giving the reader a vertiginous sense of plunging into whole new worlds of thought. I’ve chosen books that are easy to read — and also, I imagine, relatively easy to find.
Discography: De Occulta Philosophia, J.S. Bach is performed by Emma Kirkby and Carlos Mena.
Beethoven spoke of the Appassionata as his most esoteric work, but for me it is his last piano sonata, no. 31 in A flat major opus 110, in the course of which, suddenly he jumps forward to the music of a hundred years later the prophesied jazz.
Esoteric pop music is made by the pataphysicist Robert Wyatt, and the deftest of Donovan. Mountain. No Mountain.
Index
Aaron
Abraham
Abulafia, Abraham
Achilles
Adam and Eve
Adepts (Indian)
Aeschylus
Agamemnon
Agrippa, Cornelius
Ahab
Ahriman
Akhenaten
Alberti, Leon Battista
Albertus Magnus
alchemy
Alexander the Great
Amazons
Andrae, Valentine
Angels
Aphrodite
Apollo
Apuleius
Archangel Gabriel,
Archangel Michael
Aristedes
Aristotle
Arjuna
Ark of the Covenant
Artapanus
Arthur, King
Asclepius
Ashmole, Elias
Asoka, Emperor
Astarte
Asuras
Aten
Athena
Atlantis
Attila the Hun
Augustine
Aurelius, Marcus
Baal
Bach, J.S.
Backhouse, William
Bacon, Francis
Bacon, Roger
Bartolomeo, Fra
Bauval, Robert
Beatrice
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Bell, Alexander Graham
Berkeley, Bishop
Bernini, Gianlorenzo
Berosus
Blake, William
Boehme, Jacob
Book of Enoch
Bosch, Hieronymus
Botticelli, Sandro
Breton, André
Brockmer, John Paul
Bronte, Emily
Bruce, James
Bruno, Giordano
Buddha
Buddhism
Burton, Robert
Byrne, Lorna
Cabala
Cadmus
Caesar, Julius
Cagliostro, Count
Cain
Calasso, Roberto
Caligula
Cathars
Centaurs
Cerberus
Cervantes, Miguel de