Show Notes
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Primary sources Irenaeus. Against Heresies 1.28. Best early witness for the Encratites’ rejection of marriage and animal food. Accessible English text online. Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 4.28–29. Key source for Tatian, Musanus, and the Severians. Accessible English text online. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata 3. Essential for anti-Encratite argument, marriage/continence debates, Cassianus, and use of the Gospel according to the Egyptians. Accessible English text online. Hippolytus. Refutation of All Heresies 8. Useful for Tatian’s reputation, abstinence, and sectarian framing. Accessible English text online. Basil of Caesarea. Letter 188. Important later witness showing Encratites still mattered canonically in the fourth century. Accessible English text online. Synod of Gangra (especially Canons 1–2). Important for the later church’s rejection of condemning marriage and condemning meat-eating Christians. Accessible English text online. Tatian. Address to the Greeks. Useful for Tatian’s tone, worldview, and severity, even if it is not itself the main Encratite text. Modern Cambridge edition available. Acts of Thomas. Important for the wider encratite ascetic imagination and later patristic memory of the text’s Encratite character. Gospel according to the Egyptians (fragments preserved in Clement, Stromata 3). Important for Salome sayings, celibacy discourse, and the wider anti-marriage textual world.
Modern scholarship Guffey, Andrew R. “Motivations for Encratite Practices in Early Christian Literature.” Journal of Theological Studies 65, no. 2 (2014): 515–549. Probably the single best focused article for your episode. It is especially useful on motives, mixed origins, and why Encratite practice cannot be reduced to one simple cause. Litwa, M. David. Early Christianity in Alexandria: From its Beginnings to the Late Second Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Use especially Chapter 8, “Julius Cassianus and Alexandrian Ascetic Culture.” Very useful for Cassianus and Alexandrian radical continence. Crawford, Matthew R. “The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment.” New Testament Studies (2016). Strong on Tatian’s Gospel harmony, its reception, and the Syriac afterlife of the Diatessaron. McCarthy, Carmel, trans. Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709. Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Useful if you want to lean harder into the Syriac legacy of Tatian. Petersen, William L. Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 25. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Still an important specialist study for Tatian and the Diatessaron. “The Syriac Versions.” In an Oxford Academic volume on the Syriac New Testament tradition. Useful for concise background on Tatian’s Diatessaron in Syriac Christianity. “The Earliest Syriac Literature.” In The Camb
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Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects Occult Research Institute https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/ Substack https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page Cash App https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects Venmo @TheOccultRejects Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects PART TWO BIBLIOGRAPHY Christianity Created the Western Occult Primary Sources Paracelsus. Paracelsus: Essential Theoretical Writings. Edited and translated by Andrew Weeks. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008. This is the edition I’d use for Paracelsus rather than modern occult compilations; it gives the German and English texts with extensive scholarly commentary. Wellcome Collection Dee, John. John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic. Edited and translated by Joseph H. Peterson. Weiser Books, 2003. A modern edition of Dee’s Mysteriorum Libri Quinque and one of the most useful primary-source collections for the early angelic sessions. Red Wheel/Weiser Böhme, Jakob. Aurora: The Day-Spring, or Dawning of the Day in the Orient. Originally written 1612. Any scholarly or reliable critical edition can be used for the primary material concerning Böhme’s early cosmology. Böhme, Jakob. The Way to Christ. Useful for the explicitly Christian and regenerative side of Böhme rather than treating him merely as an abstract occult cosmologist. Swedenborg, Emanuel. Heaven and Hell. Originally published in Latin in 1758. I’d use the New Century Edition, translated by George F. Dole, because it includes scholarly historical material and annotations. Swedenborg Foundation Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de. Theosophic Correspondence between Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf. Translated by Edward Burton Penny. Especially useful for documenting Saint-Martin’s engagement with Böhme and his increasingly interior understanding of Christian theosophy. Theosophy Society Eckartshausen, Karl von. The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. The A. E. Waite translation is historically useful because Waite’s transmission of the text is itself part of its later occult reception. Lévi, Éliphas. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Translated by A. E. Waite. Important as a primary document for Lévi’s synthesis of Kabbalah, ceremonial magic, Christian symbolism, priesthood, polarity, and magical theory. Lévi, Éliphas. The History of Magic. Again, use this as a primary source for what Lévi believed, not as reliable modern historiography. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. Essential for understanding the specifically Christian-mystical dimension of Waite’s esotericism. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry. Useful for Waite’s conception of mystical initiation and the “secret tradition.” Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. First published 1935. Essential primary material for Fortune’s attempt to interpret Qabalah through the twentieth-century Western Mystery Tradition. Medieval Grimoires, Ritual Magic & Angelic Practice This is the group I would rely upon heavily for the material we added concerning Christian prayer, exorcism, angels, grimoires, consecration, and the unstable boundary between religion and magic. Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997/1998. Absolutely essential. Kieckhefer edits and analyzes a real medieval magical manuscript containing prayers, conjurations, astral operations, spirit catalogues, and ceremonies for consecrating magical books. PSU Press Fanger, Claire, ed. Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. One of the strongest sources for our thesis because it specifically examines medieval and Renaissance attempts to obtain knowledge or supernatural assistance through angels. PSU Press Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Vis