The Real History of the Magic Circle Part 2: From the Goetic Circle to the Modern Magical Mind
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EARLY-MODERN MAGIC AND THE GOETIC TRADITION Anonymous. Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Frankfurt, 1587. Harms, Daniel, James R. Clark, and Joseph H. Peterson, eds. The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2015. Based on Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.26. Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Earliest printed A-text, 1604. Mirčev, Andrej. The Poetics of Performance Diagrams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Weyer, Johann. Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Published as an appendix to later editions of De praestigiis daemonum. Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. London, 1584. Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or The Lesser Key of Solomon. Seventeenth-century manuscript compilation. Peterson, Joseph H., ed. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis. Comparative manuscript edition. ABRAMELIN AND RITUAL SPACE Franchetto, Andrea. “Temporary and Imaginal Sacred Space in the Textual Transmission of Modern Ritual Magic: The Temple of Abramelin (15th–20th Century).” In Modernity and the Construction of Sacred Space, edited by Aaron French and Katharina Waldner, 77–102. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024. The Book of Abramelin. Seventeenth-century German and Italian manuscript witnesses to a work generally placed by modern scholarship in an earlier late-medieval/early-modern environment. For the influential English tradition, see S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. ÉLIPHAS LÉVI AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY OCCULT REVIVAL Lévi, Éliphas. Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. 2 vols. Paris, 1854–1856. Lévi, Éliphas. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Translated by Arthur Edward Waite. London: George Redway, 1896. Otto, Bernd-Christian. “A Catholic ‘Magician’ Historicizes ‘Magic’: Éliphas Lévi’s Histoire de la Magie.” In History and Religion: Narrating a Religious Past, edited by Bernd-Christian Otto, Susanne Rau, and Jörg Rüpke. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. GOLDEN DAWN AND ALEISTER CROWLEY Plaisance, Christopher A. “Magic Made Modern? Re-evaluating the Novelty of the Golden Dawn’s Magic.” Correspondences 2, no. 2 (2014): 159–187. Regardie, Israel. The Golden Dawn: An Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Vol. 1. Chicago: Aries Press, 1937. Wheeler, Graham John. “A Microcosm of the Esoteric Revival: The Histories of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.” Correspondences 8, no. 1 (2020): 5–44. Crowley, Aleister. Book Four, Part II: Magick. 1912–1913. See especially Chapter II, “The Circle.” Crowley, Aleister. Magick in Theory and Practice. Paris: Lecram Press, 1929. Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, trans.; Aleister Crowley, ed. The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King. 1904. WICCA AND MODERN WITCHCRAFT Callow, John. Gerald Gardner and the Creation of Wicca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. Davies, Owen. Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. RITUAL, COGNITION, AND EXPERIENCE Franchetto, Andrea. “Imaginal Architectural Devices and the Ritual Space of Medieval Necromancy.” Endeavour 44, no. 4 (2020): 100748. Hobson, Nicholas M., Daniel Bonk, and Michael Inzlicht. “Rituals Decrease the Neural Response to Performance Failure.” PeerJ 5 (2017): e3363. Lang, Martin, Jan Krátký, John H. Shaver, Danijela Jerotijević, and Dimitris Xygalatas. “Effects of Anxiety on Spontaneous Ritualized Behavior.” Current Biology 25, no. 14 (2015): 1892–1897. Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. “Synchrony and Cooperation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–5.
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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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