The Occult Rejects

The Biography Of The Pentagram Episode 1: Before Philosophy

The Occult Rejects

Show Notes

If you enjoy this episode, we’re sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects. In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we’ve got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge. So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below. Thank you and enjoy the episode! 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 Buy Me A Coffee buymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejects Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects Bibliography Primary Sources MUL.APIN Enūma Anu Enlil Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa The Descent of Inanna Pyramid Texts Coffin Texts Book of the Dead Ancient Near Eastern History Jeremy Black. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Francesca Rochberg. Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science. Wayne Horowitz. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Piotr Michalowski. Selected works on Sumerian literature and early Mesopotamian civilization. Egyptology Jan Assmann. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Erik Hornung. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt and The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Richard H. Wilkinson. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. General Archaeology and Ancient Religion Barry Cunliffe. By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean. Miranda Aldhouse-Green. Selected works on ancient religion and symbolism. Chris Scarre, ed. The Human Past. Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn. Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice.

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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

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