Secret Key

Words Here

Here is a very incomplete reading list of works that I’ve found worth passing on, organized roughly by genre, with annotations.

The Library

Poetry

  • T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, and other works to taste
  • Rilke, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
  • St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul
  • Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King
  • The Song of Roland

Classics and Sacred Texts

  • The Biblical tradition. The Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets–for everyone who speaks a European language, this is the original Big Black Magic Book, and a must for magical practitioners regardless of religion. I read King James for the poetry and NIV for a more scholarly translation, but pick your poison. Don’t skip the Apocrypha, either! Here are the books that have been most significant for me, in no particular order.
    • Genesis and Exodus–Foundations and protohistory
    • Psalms–Prayers, some as old as Egypt, dealing with every condition and affliction, and useful for many purposes.
    • Ecclesiastes–OG Goth realness and existential questions
    • Daniel–Powerful myths for staying sane under empires, and for surviving their end.
    • The Gospels–Get your takes on Jesus straight from the (many, varied, and more or less contradictory) sources. I like John and Mary better than the others, but it’s a matter of taste, and there’s a good balance in hearing many voices.
    • The Book of Enoch–absolutely essential for the working wizard
  • The I Ching
  • Tao te Ching — Ursula LeGuin’s metatranslation is my favorite in English.
  • Zhuangzhi
  • The Orphic Hymns
  • Ramayana
  • Bhagavad Gita
  • The Mabinogion
  • The Poetic Edda
  • The Prose Edda
  • Popul Vuh
  • The Egyptian Book of the Dead–find the edition by Budge
  • The Orphic Hymns
  • The complete works of Euripides
  • The Dead Sea Scriptures

Grimoires and Magical Texts

  • Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa
  • Hekate: Liminal Rites by Sorita d’Este and David Rankine
  • Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by C. G. Leland
  • The Galdrabok: An Icelandic Book of Magic – the edition by Stephen E. Flowers contains very useful apparatus
  • The Greek Magical Papyri – the Betz edition is best
  • The Lesser Key of Solomon
  • The Greater Key of Solomon
  • Heptameron or Magical Elements of Peter de Abano
  • Liber Salomonis Sepher Raziel
  • The Ivory Tablets of the Crow
  • The New Nuctemeron: The Twelve Hours of Apollonius of Tyana by Marjorie Livingston
  • The 6th and 7th Books of Moses
  • A Witch’s Book of Silence by Karina BlackHeart
  • Carmina Gadelica by Alexander Carmicheal
  • The complete works of Aleister Crowley, or as much of it as you can stomach–just don’t take him too seriously! I suggest Magic in Theory and Practice, The Book of the Law, The Vision and the Voice, Liber 777, and the Book of Lies
  • Cutting the Cord by Marcella Kroll
  • Sefer Yetzirah–edition by Aryeh Kaplan
  • The Cunning Man’s Grimoire,–editied by Dr. Stephen Skinner and David Rankine
  • The Red Book by C.G. Jung

Fiction

  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus the Silmarillion for extra credit
  • Ursula LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea. Do yourself a favor and read the entire series; you’ll be better and happier for having done so. Also please read Dispossessed!
  • Umberto Eco, collected works. The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, the Prague Cemetary, and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna were especially useful to me.
  • Alan Moore, Jerusalem. If you finish it before me, no spoilers!
  • Italo Calvino, Castle of Crossed Destinies and Invisible Cities.
  • The complete works of Jane Austen
  • Jules Verne, especially Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,, The Time Machine
  • Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
  • William Gibson, complete works–especially Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition
  • Orson Scott Card, complete works–especially the Ender series and the short stories
  • Hermann Hesse–especially Demian, Siddhartha, and Narcissus and Goldmund
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, the complete works
  • Patrick Rothfuss, The Kingkiller series (including esp. The Slow Regard of Silent Things)
  • James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment