After a year-long hiatus, we are pleased to announce the return of our book club.
Next up, we’re reading Laura Pashby’s Chasing Fog: Finding Enchantment in a Cloud, ‘a meditation on fog and mist’, accompanied by photographs capturing lands shrouded in otherworldly mists, and Pashby’s journeys into this most mythologised of weathers. Join the discussion in the new year, and expect an interview with the author.
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No—I’m not talking about bringing more fantasy and magical realism to your bookshelf, though it might mean that. I felt called to write this after scrawling through reviews for Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and seeing reader after reader preface their review with disclaimers such as “This was trash” followed inevitably by “but I enjoyed it.” Why do we feel the need to excuse our pleasure? What’s more, why do we assume entertainment is not worthy? Some books might impart little insight, but of all books I have seen generate reader shame, this one irritated me the most. Anne Rice’s atmospheric Vampire Chronicles dealt with questions of suicide, existential emptiness, grief, and the shadow self, as well as their place within theology. It isn’t her fault that her vehicle for these ideas was this folkloric archetypal monster that haunts the shadows, nor that these turned out to be such engaging stories that connected with readers. On the contrary I would have thought it a sign that she was a master of her craft. She redefined the vampire myth and connected with readers on a deep, archetypal level, revealing the shadows of our collective unconscious.
In the 19th century, good writing was popular writing. Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dumas all published their stories as serials, and readers wanted more and more. These were not stories that centred magic but they were engaging and their prose simple. It wasn’t too different from the way we binge Netflix series today. Admittedly they were often a little on the long side, bloated with what now might be considered filler content (I remember scenes of pastoral life getting tiresome in Anna Karenina, in particular), but we have to consider that they were paid by the word or line—and that their words were in great demand. Still, Tolstoy and others like him demonstrated an ability to say a lot with a little in tight short stories such as The Kreutzer Sonata, and The Death of Ivan Illych. It is hard to write a story where you know the heart so well that the prose can narrow in scope. Think of the those books in the careers of modern writers such as Cormac MccCarthy’s The Road and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go; both got so close to the heart of the matter there was no need for superfluous lyricism. But beauty shines through their semantic richness. The words alone are just words. They do not self-describe as wordsmiths or lovers of words, as if words were shiny things like gold, diamond and titanium we can mine from the ground. But few words, strung together, can convey deep meaning. The writers who have been described as masters of their craft, such as Jhumpa Lahiri, use prose sparingly and to great effect.
And yet somehow, we have come to a place where we believe that literary merit is found in the works that experiment with form, that juggle metaphors, however contrived, that find unusual alternatives for clichés no matter how longwinded and inauthentic. I see it in the way some books are heralded above others: loose, fragmented, flat, perhaps edgy, no demonstrative ability to tell a good story or captivate readers.
Sally Rooney’s first two novels connected with readers in a manner comparable to what would have happened in the 19th century. So many of us felt seen and understood on a deeper level. We also enjoyed the ride. Infamously, Will Self—while promoting a line of macarons at the restaurant Hakkasan in 2019—dismissed her work as “very simple stuff with no literary ambition.” I think Rooney may have had the same bone with books by writers with huge literary ambitions and self-consciously complex prose. In her Normal People, one character laments the state of modern literature: “It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.” I wonder if in writing her Beautiful World, Where Are You? she was taking a stab again at this literary world, at once criticising the “pretty little novels” about nothing, and (arguably) writing one of them (to make a point?).
Seriously, our priorities have shifted so much: a few months ago I was reading a piece in The New Yorker where the reviewer slated Roberto Bolaño’s prose for its purported flatness. The author Giles Harvey remarked: “He was something of an anachronism: a great novelist who was not a great writer. You have to go back to Balzac and Dostoyevsky to find masters of the novel form who showed so little interest in the sentence.” But if verbosity is seen as the peak of literary prowess, we wouldn’t have Albert Camus or Gustave Flaubert or so many of the writers who are considered masters of their craft. As a Zen gardener pares back the chaos to show us what is most important, I think good writers know which words matter.
This tendency towards self-flagellation exists in other arenas in the art world, too. In a bid to accumulate cultural capital, we’ve stared bleakly at grey canvases justified with an essay full of art talk, read those books that everyone is supposed to like and praise when they offer us nothing at all. Sometimes their hype is justified. But I don’t think many of the works praised for their worthiness now—or namedropped in conversations—will stand the test of time. Ideas about whether or not art ought to be enjoyed have been shifting since the industrial revolution. Now many of us will gladly—or rather, unhappily—sit through a 4-hour opera in absolute silence. In the 18th and 19th century, opera was a more leisurely affair. You’d go irrespective of what was on. It was a chance to meet friends, perhaps meet your future partner. Complain about the performance or sing its praises. Drink and eat. Ilana Walder-Biesanz writes for Opera Vivre about how, in the 18th century, composers would give a less prominent singer the first aria in act two: “This was known as the “sorbet aria”: it was traditional to serve sorbet at that time, and the clinking of the spoons made the music difficult to hear.) If the opera truly bores you, you can always pay a visit to friends in another box or head to the gambling tables.” Cut to the present moment, and eating so much as a snack at the opera is frowned upon, a clear sign of unsophistication. You lose cultural capital.
What we place value in culturally shows what we place value in spiritually. Sometimes I read a book and I think the answer is: we place value in nothing. At the heart of so many books is an empty husk. We are granted a few slivers of real life, and no thread to connect them all. There is no meaning.
This is not to say we can’t have our lyrical novels. A good question might be, to steal from Marie Kondo, do they spark joy? Admittedly this might not be the best measure of the value of a piece of art. It might make us suffer. But that might have a function too. Since our first attempts at art, from the first cave paintings onwards, we’ve been forging storied relationships with the world outside of ourselves and the world within us, honing the art of meaning-making. Do we really need another book about a sad figure wandering around suburbia feeling disenfranchised? Perhaps yes, if it comes from a place of truth. Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road feels potent and true and leaves you feeling a little different than you were when you went in.
We seem to have arrived in a strange era of binary thinking where the obviously meaningful and impactful and captivating is suspect. The more unnavigable and dare I say it, boring, the worthier. We know binaries are a cultural artifice, so why don’t we acknowledge this?
Re-enchanting our bookshelves means re-injecting wonder, life and meaning into books. Long have our strange species looked to the written word to find out who we are and who we can be and who we must not be. I don’t know about you, but after a pandemic and at the onset of another terrible war, I know which books I’ll be putting down—and which ones I’ll be picking up.
A yogi seated in a garden, North Indian or Deccani miniature painting, c.1620-40 Source: "KAMOD RAGINI. Northern India or Deccan, from a Ragamala series. Provenance Sundaram, Delhi, 1967." Public Domain.
Yoga is now ubiquitous in fitness studios around the world. Many practitioners enjoy it as a workout, focusing on the asanas (Sanskrit for “postures”), with the added dimension of relaxation through various techniques of pranayama (the Sanskrit word for breath control). But yoga, notoriously hard to pin down, is far deeper than its modern iteration. And its influence on the occult and esoteric traditions is tremendous.
Yoga was brought to the Western world both as an import and export; Indian yogis such as Krishnamacharya, Vivekananda, Yogananda and Sivananda helped systemise yoga in a way it could be consumed in the west. Then there were occultists such as Madame Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley and WB Yeats who transmitted yoga through new translations of ancient texts. Yogic philosophy continues to influence the Western Occult and the New Age movement, though it is often buried beneath new jargon. In recent years, there has been much scholarship on the invention of modern postural yoga, and a returning interest to the more esoteric, eclectic side of this practice with roots in Ancient India. If overwhelmed by the sheer volume of literature on this vast subject, here are some reading suggestions to begin.
The Truth of Yoga by Daniel Simpson
Daniel Simpson lays out an accessible history of yoga, drawing from recent scholarship. Tracing its early mentions in early Vedanta literature and renunciate culture through to modern postural practices, he challenges the idea of authenticity and ancient lineage—the idea that one way is the right way—instead presenting an eclectic, ever-evolving tradition that has changed with each transmitter. Simpson, who teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, invites the reader to tell new stories about yoga that meet the challenges we are facing now, such as climate change and global inequality. He also introduces a lot of ideas with which occult practitioners will be familiar, but under different names. He writes: “Western fascination with the mystical East had inspired occult groups—led by the Theosophical Society—to translate texts, supplementing the efforts of colonial scholars. In their quest to find a common truth behind all religions, they were drawn to study yoga because of its focus on direct experience. “Much of the modern western occult is a tapestry of imperial spoils, intangible as well as tangible, largely syncretised and hidden beneath new terms—you may recognise many esoteric ideas and practices in the history of yoga. A fascinating text, suggested to yogis, as well as occult practitioners looking beyond lineage claims.
The Ten Principal Upanishads (co-translated by WB Yeats and Shri Purohit Swami)
If you’ve been in the occult community for a while you’ll have heard the terms “Vedanta” and “Vedic” literature floating around. These are the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, and the most recent of these Vedic texts are known as the Upanishads. These texts document a wide variety of rituals and esoteric knowledge in Sanskrit. A central theme is the awareness of atman—known as purusa in Patanjali’s sutras—the higher self, the divine, the witness who sits inside every one of us and connects us to something larger than ourselves. From the Paramananda Upanishad: “He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, he never suffers; because when he sees all creatures within his true Self, then jealousy, grief and hatred vanish.” Elsewhere in the same Upanishad: “He who is rich in the knowledge of the Self does not covet external power or possession.” The Upanishads have inspired philosophers, occultists, writers, artists, scientists, and those interested in metaphysics, including the likes of Schopenhauer, Emerson, Thoreau, and Christopher Isherwood. Around 108 are known, but this book presents ten of the most important. Poet and occultist WB Yeats was a searcher, a member of both the Theosophical Society and The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In his foreword, Yeats expresses his hope that in reading these ancient ideas from the East, we might recover the mysticism we have lost in the west. From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad you may recognise the concept of Will, employed later by Crowley: “You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny … ".
The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali
Considered a core text to modern yogis, the unknown sage Patanjali is credited as synthesising pre-existing, older knowledge about yoga such as Samkhya philosophy, Buddhism, Jainism, and Vedanta, through 196 succinct sutras (the Sanskrit for “threads”). These sutras explain what yoga is, why it is necessary and what is to be gained from practising it—as well as what is to be lost by not practising. Written at least 1700 years ago, little is known about Patanjali, who may be one person or many or more of an archetypal sage channelled across several centuries. The second sutra defines yoga, in Sanskrit: Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah: “Yoga is the arresting of the fluctuations of the mind.” He goes onto say why you’d do this: “Tada drastuh svarupe vasthanam”—”Then the Seer abides in its own nature”—or then consciousness is drawn back to the purusa or atman. Patanjali lays out key ideas about the eight limbs of yoga: 1. Yama (community ethics) 2. Niyama (personal observances) 3. Pranayama (Breath regulation/control of life-force). 4. Pratyahara (Withdrawal of senses and focus inwards) 5. Dharana (concentration) 6. Dhyana (Meditation) 7. Samadhi (enlightenment/merging with the purusa). He explains concepts such as avidya (ignorance) and vidya (clear understanding) which could be compared to the modern psychological concept of shadow work, different ideas about samadhi, and liberation, before, in the final chapter, presenting more supernatural ideas about what happens when one has gained a mastery of yoga, including the ability to fly through the air, telekinesis, and superhuman strength, a part of the text largely disregarded by modern practitioners. Of the asanas, one of eight limbs of yoga, Patanjali says: “sthira sukham āsanam” or “asana means a steady and comfortable posture,” which sounds a lot like sitting down comfortably.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Svātmārāma
“The entire universe is just a creation of thought. The play of the mind is just a creation of thought. Abandon the mind which is only thought. Take refuge in the changeless, O Rama, and surely find peace.” Another highly influential text on modern yoga, this classic 15th-century text again synthesises a selection of knowledge on yoga. It is quite practical in nature, recommending that “the Hatha yogi should live in a secluded hut free of stones, fire, and dampness to a distance of four cubits in a country that is properly governed, virtuous, prosperous, and peaceful.” Noted for its misogyny and weirdness, yogi Svātmārāma shares purification methods, 84 asanas, pranayama techniques, spiritual centres of the body (chakra), Kundalini, bandhas, channels of the body (nadi, similar to the concept of Meridian lines in Chinese medicine) and symbolic gestures (mudra). The asanas are predominantly close to the ground, focussed on fanning things that need eliminating into the Agni (sacred fire) located around the solar plexus and responsible for digestion—much of it borrows from Ayurveda, an ancient system of traditional Indian medicine. Memorable advice includes details on how to induce an enema in a river using a hollow bamboo stick, swallowing a rag to remove excess mucous and a breathing technique where you inhale making the sound of a male bee and exhale making the sound of a female bee, to fill the mind with bliss.
The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky’s influence on the modern occult, esotericism and new age beliefs is undeniable. In the 19th century, she founded the Theosophical Society, and is credited as one of the early transmitters of Eastern beliefs, including key ideas from Buddhism and Hinduism, and indeed, yoga. She travelled widely, fusing together converging ideas about the divine and the supernatural, and recorded her ideas in two texts, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. The latter was a commentary on what she claimed came from Ancient Tibetan manuscripts: a secret doctrine known to Plato and the early Hindu sages, which she says predicted the age of materialism, and its subsequent decline. She writes that a secret brotherhood has conserved this ancient wisdom and are capable of paranormal powers. She details her beliefs about the origin of the universe, borrowing from the Hindu concept of cynical development, reincarnation and karma, and the Platonic idea of Anima Mundi, or a world soul. She held that all religions were in some way true, but that these South Asian religions were closer to the truth. Raja yoga comes up frequently in this text, spoken of in esoteric terms. As a spiritualist, Blavatsky was accused of producing fraudulent paranormal apparitions, and the link to Tibetan masters is sketchy, which led many to think her a Charlatan. The questionable founding myth, as we shall see, is common in most new religions and not unique to Theosophy. Nevertheless, the myth and her teachings had staying power, captivating countless artists and writers, among which were WB Yeats, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Edison, Jack London, James Joyce, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hilda af Klimt and Kurt Vonnegut. Her ideas continue to resonate with readers today and influence modern esotericism.
Eight Lectures on Yoga by Aleister Crowley
Another occultist most of us will have at least heard of is Aleister Crowley. Crowley was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, another 19th-century society with a compelling myth about its origins, which drew from Freemasonry, Qabalah and Hermetic Magic, occult tarot and Geomancy, among other ideas. After leaving this secret society, he set off around the world, like other affluent searchers of his time, seeking an alternative spirituality to the one he was raised with. In India he studied Raja yoga, before returning to Britain and co-founding the A. A., and the O. T. O (Ordo Templo Orientis)., through which he propagated his new religion Thelema. Thelema featured a syncretic blend of Western and Eastern beliefs, including Yoga and the Qabalah. It influenced the creation of Gerald Gardner’s Wicca in the 20th century. Crowley is best remembered for his performative rituals and magick, seldom for his interest in mysticism. One publication from Crowley’s small press was Eight Lectures on Yoga, intended as a concise, demystification of this practice, stripped of dogma. Crowley viewed yoga as an aim higher than magick, and this is considered a vital part of any Thelemite’s curriculum.
Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature by Swami Vivekananda
Yoga was also exported to the West by Indian yogis. One such transmitter was Swami Vivekananda, a sannyasin (Hindu ascetic). At the end of the 19th century, he set off to the US, reasoning: “As our country is poor in social virtues, so this country is lacking spirituality. I give them spirituality and they give me money …”. He founded the Vedanta Society and began to teach yoga to meet an appetite for these “exotic” ideas. In 1986 he published his seminal Raja Yoga. Vivekananda regarded all forms of spiritual practice as yoga and was dismissive of the physical practice yoga had evolved into. He claimed this book Raja Yoga detailed the “Science of Religion”, explaining the practice of yoga and providing commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The prose is accessible and inspiring to those unfamiliar with the material, Vivekananda writes: “there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. The mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean …”
Madame Blavatsky said of Tolstoy: "He is one of those few elect who begin with intuition and end with quasi-omniscience.” To understand occult literature, we sometimes have to venture beyond the canon of this eclectic, ever-evolving traditions and see how various threads intertwine. Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by Tolstoy’s work, and the pair corresponded between 1908 and 1910. In a letter to Gandhi (published later as A Letter to the Hindu), Tolstoy convinced Gandhi to use nonviolent resistance to gain independence from the British colonial rule in the Indian peninsula, citing Swami Vivekananda’s work and the Vedas. So strong was Tolstoy’s investment in ahimsa, or non-violence, that in later life be became a vegetarian and wrote much about it. In his essay ‘What I Believe,’ Tolstoy emphasizes his conviction that we become more violent by inflicting suffering upon animals: “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” Tolstoy originally wrote The First Step as the foreword to The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams. In it, Tolstoy encourages readers to practice harmlessness: “If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.” He also suggests that vegetarianism is humanity’s natural state: “So strong is humanity’s aversion to all killing. But by example, by encouraging greediness, by the assertion that God has allowed it, and above all by habit, people entirely lose this natural feeling.”
Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, And Healing In Yoga And Beyond by Matthew Remski
Often in yoga studios, you will hear a distinction made between “traditional” and “non-traditional.” Traditional is misleading though, used to refer to postures standardised in the early 20th century, when India was beginning to codify its own national physical tradition, borrowing from its past. Around this time, gurus such as Krishnamacharya were also beginning to export yoga abroad. Pattahbi Jois, known for developing the modern postural school of yoga called ashtanga yoga, was better known by his disciples as Guruji. In naming his yoga sequence ashtanga, he nodded his head back to Patanjali’s astau angani—eight limbs of yoga—to which he claimed an interrupted lineage. In fact, he claimed his sequence was older yet. He studied with Krishnamacharya, who claimed to have had in his arsenal a 5000-year-old yoga text, the Yoga Korunta. He claimed his only copy was eaten by ants but continued to transmit its knowledge. Jois claimed this as his base for ashtanga yoga. Whether real or not, this mirrors what happened in other esoteric schools, the myth of the secret text, unfortunately destroyed, but fortunately with one person who remembers it. Remski, like other historians, challenges the notion that ashtanga is traditional, instead revealing the victims of Pattahbi Jois’ sexual and physical assault. Sadly this is not the first time a guru has been accused of sexual misconduct; many of us will have seen the Netflix documentary exposing Bikram yoga’s founder. Similar problems have arisen in esoteric orders and secret societies. Remski demonstrates how cult dynamics within such a high demand group create a culture of silence and tacit acquiescence. Remski spoke with a number of practitioners, such as Karen Rain, who had been sexually assaulted by Jois, and others who had been physically injured by his adjustments. He puts forward a persuasive argument against putting trust in any one teacher, and a reminder of the value of interoception—listening to your body. The conclusion is solution-focussed, offering a list of questions for anyone who can see cult dynamics appearing in their spiritual community.
Post-lineage Yoga: From Guru to #MeToo by Theodora Wildcroft
In 2017, the #MeToo movement led to a number of abuse allegations within a variety of different communities. As explored in Remski’s book, the yoga community was not immune; self-styled gurus including Bikram and Pattahbi Jois were outed for their sexual assault and as a result their spiritual practice, and lineage claims, were put into question. We have seen how gurus or esoteric leaders often claimed an uninterrupted lineage to the ancient past. To those in the occult/magic world, this will be familiar. Wicca, before its history was laid bare, claimed to be an old religion, not a modern, creative invention inspired by the past. So too did 19th-century secret societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Such claims can be enticing, suggestive that there is an ancient truth that has been covered up by generations of power grabbing, but preserved by an underground community. Such myths and secrecy, as we have seen, can also cover up for stories of abuse and enable one person to accumulate power. Interestingly, Wildcroft belongs to two worlds, the yoga world and the Pagan world. She had already witnessed how scholars such as Professor Ronald Hutton have shown, compassionately, that modern Paganism is a creative blend of old and new, and the growing acceptance and changes within these communities. Post-Lineage Yoga and Neo-Paganism, she suggests, have much in common, with an emphasis on direct experience, working in harmony with the cyclical nature of our bodies and the seasons, and our interconnectedness.
Final thoughts
How might yoga look in the near future? Knowing that modern yoga practices are a creative blend of past and present, like their Neo-Pagan counterparts, doesn’t discredit them; rather it enables us to explore the ideas less dogmatically, telling, to paraphrase Simpson, new stories that we need now. There is no right path to this goal. As we confront the painful reality of colonialism, we will also have to undo some of that syncretism that has happened in the occult (with ideas appropriated from India, but also from Judaism, Egypt, Houdou, Sufism etc) and see how we’ve integrated these beliefs into a capitalistic matrix and changed them—this will involve learning about the histories and traditions of borrowed ideas and recognising where truth meets fiction. Telling new stories to help us in an era of climate crisis and decolonising the occult might come hand-in-hand. Three-fold law, for instance, is a loan from the Hindu concept of Karma; vitally, Gerald Gardner’s understanding of it excludes animals and other beings, as Scientology treated its appropriation of reincarnation. How much of what we are taking is helping us? And how much is simply assimilating into the disenchanted world we live in now? By reading around (including ancient texts and modern thought), working with multiple teachers, and not religiously following one school of thought, we might reach an understanding more in fitting with what a long line of occultists and yogis have sought: a focus on honing our own intuition so that we might have direct experience with the higher mysteries, rather than lose that to groupthink and organised religion. In turn, we might be able to unwind some of the Cartesian thought that have become enmeshed with magical thinking, and find something sacred and something shared.
In 2022 Elizabeth will be offering accessible yoga classes anchored in yoga philosophy. Sign up to her newsletter to receive updates and read her blog.
Tapestry showing Arthur as one of the Nine Worthies, wearing a coat of arms often attributed to him (c. 1385)
"But Arthur's grave is nowhere seen, whence antiquity of fables still claims that he will return.”
William of Malmesbury in 1125
“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross.”
― Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur
One day King Arthur will return to save England. It’s a motif recurring in English literature since Old English. King Arthur, like Jesus Christ, will be resurrected, and return when the land needs him most. Many cultures have their own myths of the king asleep in the mountains, ready to be awoken when the time is right. It’s a romantic idea and one that has inspired many retellings. Some legends say Arthur is buried beneath the abbey in Glastonbury, that he ruled from Avalon. Landmarks associated with Arthurian legend abound in Britain, from South Wales to Tintagel to Winchester.
The conception of King Arthur derives from folklore and literary invention and there is no evidence King Arthur and his round table ever existed. Even so, the enduring appeal of the story tells us something about the value of myth. War, uncertainty, divisive politics, the climate crisis; we are forever longing for a song to awaken the land.
Arthurian Romances - Chrétien de Troyes
“Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent...; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told.”
― Chrétien de Troyes
Chivalrous knights on quests to save damsels in distress, young men who defeat monsters and are knighted at the royal court, romantic love comparable to the divine. These are all now are tropes in the fantasy genre, and have been retold and retold, but in Medieval Europe this type of story was new and exciting. Chrétien de Troyes, writing in 12th century France, wrote about King Arthur, Perceval and contributed Lancelot to the mythology. He incorporated into his stories courtly love, popularised in Provençal poetry. Chrétien’s stories are often seen as precursors to the modern novel.
The Mabinogion - Anon
“So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptised her, and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd.”
― Mabinogion, The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch O Hergest, and Other Ancient Welsh Mss.
For those who have read Chrétien’s tales, many of the stories here will be familiar. The Mabinogion, written in Old Welsh, is the pinnacle of Wales’ rich literary history. With its shapeshifting animals, sorcerers and fierce female characters, it is believed that some of these stories are inspired by pre-Christian precedents in Celtic folklore. Historians consider Culhwch and Olwen and The Dream of Rhonabwy important as they potentially preserve older stories with were told orally before the Medieval period, filling in gaps in what is often speculative archeology. They tell of an Arthur quite different to the one central to the myth of a heroic age.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Translated by J. R. R. Tolkien and later Simon Armitage, among others, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the better known—and most discussed—Arthurian stories. This 14th-century middle English chivalric romance tells the tale of how Sir Gawain, a knight of Arthur’s Round Table, accepted a challenge from a mysterious Green Knight. J. R. R. Tolkien said the Green Knight was the "most difficult character" to interpret in Sir Gawain. In English folklore, green was traditionally associated with nature, fertility and rebirth; it has also been associated with witchcraft and devilry. Sir Gawain also contains the first recorded use of the word pentagle in English, which some academics have linked to magical traditions.
The History of the Kings of Britain - Geoffrey of Monmouth
"I have not been able to discover anything at all on the kings who lived here before the Incarnation of Christ, or indeed about Arthur and all the others who followed on after the Incarnation. Yet the deeds of these men were such that they deserve to be praised for all time.”
—Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain
Geoffrey of Monmouth chronicles the lives of the kings of England, from Brutus who slayed the giants to King Arthur. Geoffrey helped popularise the King Arthur myth, telling the story of how Merlin’s magic spell spurred Arthur’s conception, through to Arthur’s conquest of Northern Europe and his defeat of Mordred. The strange thing about The History of the Kings of England (or Historia Regum Britanniae) is that it blends history and myth. Potentially taken as historical until the 16th century, it is now considered a valuable piece of medieval literature.
Le Morte Darthur - Thomas Mallory
"Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born.”
Published in 1485, Le Mort d’Arthur is yet another reworking of Arthurian legend, featuring Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. For many future writers inspired by Arthurian legend, this is often the principle source. Mallory places emphasis on the Christian idea of ‘divine right to rule.’
Les Lais de Marie de France
A lai, or lay, is a form of short story from medieval English and French literature; it’s a rhyming tale of courtly love and chivalry, often featuring Celtic motifs. These Breton lais were written in the late 12th century by a female writer, Marie de France. Little is known about Marie except she was born in France and wrote in England. She was likely a contemporary to Chrétien de Troyes and several of her lais mention King Arthur.
The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend by Alan Lupack
This is a good critical history of Arthurian legend in literature through to contemporary pop culture, including art, music and film. The book is easy to navigate with chapters dedicated to characters and particular stories that come up again and again, including the Grail quest and the story of Tristan and Isolt. Recommended reading as a companion to the original texts.
Excalibur (1981 film)
Merlin : You brought me back. Your love brought me back. Back to where you are now. In the land of dreams.
Arthur : Are you a dream, Merlin?
Merlin : A dream to some.
Arguably the best film re-telling of the King Arthur legend, John Boorman’s epic historical fantasy adaptation stars Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Nicol Williamson and Nigel Terry, among others. Based on Le Mort d’Arthur, it also borrows from other stories. Legend has it King Arthur pulled the legendary sword Exalibur from the stone. Later he was gifted the sword by the lady of the lake, a reminder of his heroic destiny and divine right to rule. This is the journey of the sword. A 2011 study by Jean-Marc Elsholz demonstrated how closely the film Excalibur was inspired by the Arthurian romance tradition. Boorman emphasised the film is about mythical truth, not historical truth: "That's what my story is about: the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious."
King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition By Carolyne Larrington
Written by a fellow in Medieval Literature at St John’s College Oxford, this book focuses on the enchantresses of Arthurian Romances, from Morgan le Fay (sometimes Morgana) to the Lady of the Lake, and their enduring magic. Morgan(a)’s potential connection to Celtic or pre-Celtic deities, like the Morrigan, is briefly touched upon.
King Arthur: Myth-Making and History by N. J. Higham
Through studying the enduring myth of King Arthur we can see how myths change on each re-telling. N. J. Higham explores how historians and writers from the Middle Ages to the present day have portrayed Arthur differently, with an in-depth examination of The History of the Britons and the Welsh Annals. The author asks important questions about the political and cultural reasons for the evolution of King Arthur and the weaponisation of myth. It raises important questions about the myths we tell today and how they shape our beliefs and consumer behaviour. It also emphasises the importance of myth in inspiring people.
Last words: ‘the power of myth’
This last book is particularly pertinent as we look for solutions in a world in strife, from the climate crisis to gross inequality and suffering. There is an ongoing discussion regarding the value of myth and storytelling in world building.
Yuval Noah Harari in his international bestselling non-fiction book, Homosapiens, wrote: ‘Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.’ So myths help us cooperate. We may well be able, through telling stories that inspire people to do good (and dismantling those which cause divisiveness), to change the world, or our little corner of it.
Mythology is and has been weaponised to serve political means, but at its core there is something that strives toward something akin to a universal truth. Joseph Campbell, in the Power of Myth, said it best: “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” If we choose our re-tellings wisely, from these ever-enduring stories, we may still find a song to awaken the land.
Ghosts may or may not be real, but behind all good ghost stories there is a grain of truth. We spoke with Melissa Edmundson, editor of Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890-1940, about the real fears underlying the stories that scare us.
“‘It makes me creep to think of it even now,’ she said. ‘I woke up, all at once, with that dreadful feeling as if something were going to happen, you know! I was wide awake, and hearing every little strange sound for miles around, it seemed to me. There are so many strange little noises in the country for all it is so still.’”
The Giant Wistaria by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
On dark nights we’ve all watched the shadows and wondered whether something in the darkness was watching us, something unknown. Weird fiction happens when we dwell on these stranger parts of reality. The editor of Women’s Weird, Melissa Edmundson tells us ‘…for me, Weird is often “quieter” than horror. There’s something ominous waiting just below the surface. Unlike horror, there is also more left to the imagination.’
Weird Fiction appeared in the late Victorian period, coinciding with the occult revival and the rise in paranormal investigation societies like The Ghost Club and the Society for Psychical Research. Typically we associate the genre with writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville and William Burroughs, but many women have written weird fiction too; Women’s Weird recognises this. This chilling collection of short stories brings together Weird fiction from women writers including Edith Wharton, Mary Butts, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edith Nesbit. Edmundson reminds us that women have long been associated with magic, and the intuition necessary to communicate with whatever hides behind the veil. In the stories found in this collection, a strange presence is felt in a new build, weird things happen when a man destroys a bed that’s been in his family for generations, an architect explores the crypt and no good can come of that.
To introduce Women’s Weird, Edmundson cites Mary Butts’ essay ‘Ghosties and Ghoulies’: ‘A writer must, if only half-consciously, believe in what he is writing about. Details he can invent, and setting; terror and wonder he must have known and may have reflected on.’ Writing can be an opportunity to ask others—’is it just me who feels this way about reality?’—and to realise many others feel the same.
The stories in this collection unsettled me (and therefore worked for me) because they felt weirdly real; I too have felt that strange, dreamlike terror in the small hours of the morning when everyone else is sleeping. It’s a feeling, more than anything; we seldom pin down its source or perpetrator(s). True to life then, Women’s Weird prioritises subtlety and psychological terror over the explicit. What little is shown remains largely unknown, unfinished, uncertain. Edith Nesbit writes this to introduce her short story “The Shadow”: ‘You must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you have ever come close to, are alike in these respects — no explanation, no logical coherence.’ Humans are hard-wired to hate uncertainty. We don’t like unanswerable questions, nor things we can’t control, like nature. We worry about what lingers in the darkness. We like our monsters to be predictable, and therefore beatable. Even modernity hasn’t killed uncertainty; there may no longer be bears and wolves that lurk in the woods in Britain and Ireland, but there may well be other things we don’t yet understand.
Many of our fears can be contextualised in a time and place. Some contend with personal experiences, trauma and mental health. Others are near-universal but taboo. In Women’s Weird, some of the stories deal with personal beliefs commonly held at the time, often beliefs in the occult or spirit realm. Edmundson tells us the author Margery Lawrence, for instance, ‘was a lifelong believer in Spiritualism and frequently connected to those who had passed to the “other side”. She wrote Ferry Over Jordan in 1944, her treatise on Spiritualism which included many of her own personal experiences making contact with loved ones—humans and pets!’
The aforementioned author Mary Butts was an occultist and studied under the infamous Aleister Crowley. ‘In her supernatural writing, she was also influenced by M.R. James, so perhaps she represents a good balance of “story” and “belief.” May Sinclair was a member of the Society for Psychical Research and used her supernatural fiction to work through her own ideas of the unexplained.’
Fears related to personal experience and trauma also feature prominently in this collection. Only as hauntings or monsters can some sorrow be expressed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, after the birth of her first child, was made to undergo a “rest-cure” for severe postpartum depression. ‘She wrote her most famous story “The Yellow Wall-paper,” as a response to that treatment and sent her doctor, Silas Weir Mitchell, a copy. In her 1913 essay “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’,” she ends by saying the story “was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” Her ghost stories definitely reflect her feminist views.’
Edmundson says: ‘…Much like dystopian fiction today, Weird fiction may outwardly be about unexplained supernatural or supernormal forces, but underneath it tells us something about our own “real” world that we must come to terms with. I don’t think our fears have changed too much.’
Awareness of what scares us—and the ability to reflect on these fears—is integral to writing Weird fiction and Horror in general. The fear of death, inevitable as it is, is a common concern for horror writers. Anne Rice, author of Interview with a Vampire, wrote that: ‘Vampires are the best metaphor for the human condition. Here you have a monster with a soul that's immortal, yet in a biological body. It's a metaphor for us, as it's very difficult to realise that we are going to die, and day to day we have to think and move as though we are immortal.’ Fear of loss, or our self-destructive tendencies, are other common fears we struggle to articulate in waking life. The bestselling author of horror Stephen King was abandoned by his father and suffered from alcoholism and addiction. His fears of abandonment and his own vices continue to haunt his fiction.
Shirley Jackson, author of The Haunting of Hill House, knows how to write a psychologically terrifying story. In her lecture “How I write,” she wrote: ‘Now no one can get into writing a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on; either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether.’ She described finding a note written to herself with the words ‘oh no oh no Shirley not dead Theodora Theodora’, which she couldn’t remember writing, and this frightened her. ‘I began to think that maybe I had better get to work writing this book awake, because otherwise I was going to find myself writing in my sleep, and I got out the typewriter and went to work as though something was chasing me, which I kind of think something was.’
These stories are scary because, to paraphrase Robert Bresson, they ‘render the real more precise.’ Try as we may try to ignore the darkness, it’s still there. We may or may not have had strange visitations from ghosts and spirits, but we all know how weird and wonderful the world is, how terrifying it can feel to be alive, to feel powerless in difficult circumstances, to be alone in a dark room, to wake up from nightmares, to know our lives are finite, to face the void and uncertainty, to wonder who we are, to find ourselves changing from one day to the next, to have a consciousness and to feel at the mercy of our minds and bodies. And these fears are very real and persistent—writers of fiction dare not look away.
Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890-1940 edited by Melissa Edmundson, published by Handheld Press on 31 October 2019. Catch the book launch at the beautiful Soho bookshop The Second Shelf on 30 October.
Nature has long been something to fear; in ancient literature, our distant ancestors personified it as monsters and fought it, from Scylla to Beowulf. Nudity and bodily fluids such as menstruation are still taboo in most cultures. Paradoxically, nature is also something we love and regard as sacred; we can’t afford to lose it, so we fence off green spaces and cultivate gardens. If we image a future post the climate crisis, it looks bleak and dystopian.
Historically, nature has been a place individuals go to seek creativity and wisdom. A period of reclusion in the mountains or woods was considered vital for artists, writers and spiritual practitioners of the past. Solitude is still a catalyst for innovation. We often talk about re-connecting with nature, as if it were something separate to us. But we are nature. In literature, leaving civilisation and stepping out into the wilderness presents an opportunity for the hero to re-connect with themselves and their true nature—or something akin to the divine. Many cosmologies have myths that emphasise humans are part of the natural world, not its masters, and this is reflected in their consumption habits as moderation. Today in Western culture, we are in need of new stories to repair this relationship. We are taking too much and as a consequence endangering organisms that enrich our lives, or the resources on which we depend for our own survival. In other words, in harming nature, we are harming ourselves.
Here are some reading suggestions for learning more about our place in the natural world.
Often considered the world’s oldest surviving great work of literature, this epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia tells the story of Gilgamesh, a young king who fights against monsters sent by the gods, and goes on a quest to seek immortality. He eventually must come to terms with nature and the inevitability of death—and in turn becomes a good king. We encounter along the way a parallel to the Hebrew Bible’s Garden of Eden, in the Garden of the Gods. Enkidu and Shamhat are made by a god and live in harmony with plants and animals. Endiku, like Adam, is introduced to a woman (always the scapegoat) who tempts him, Shamhat, like Eve. In both stories, a man accepts food from a woman, becomes ashamed of his nakedness and covers it, and must leave the garden, unable to return. On leaving the Garden of Eden, or the Garden of the Gods, harmony was lost. Nature became something terrifying to be fought. This story is the first to play with this dichotomy, the wilds versus civilisation, and shows that the Utopian dream of living harmoniously with nature existed pre-Abrahamic religions, and was not a reality for Ancient Pagans.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
The idea that Native Americans lived in harmony with a pristine natural world as simple hunter-gatherers is an enticing one, but it is not altogether true, according to Mann. The issue with resorting to the “Nobel Savage” trope is that some communities were environmental stewards, others weren’t—and for the most part, the situation was more complex than that. “The Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity of their environment,” he writes. “They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation and thirst, and fled their cities en masse, leaving them as silent warnings of the perils of ecological hubris.” Before the European colonisation of the Americas, Native Americans actively moulded the land around them, though their methods were more sustainable than that of the colonisers, who swiftly wiped out species that had been around for thousands of years. There is evidence that 70-80 percent of the Amazon forest was grown by humans. The complexity of societies Pre-Columbus was comparable to Eurasian counterparts. “In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo.”
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her experiences as a mother, scientist, and writer of Native American heritage, Robin Wall Kimmerer invites us to look closer at something we normally don’t see: the mosses that carpet our temperate forest floors. Part memoir, part scientific treatise, Kimmerer shows us that we have much to learn from these inconspicuous organisms, and in turn the natural world as an interconnected web of which we are part. “I think that it is this that draws me to the pond on a night in April, bearing witness to puhpowee,” writes Kimmerer. “Tadpoles and spores, egg and sperm, mine and yours, mosses and peepers—we are all connected by our common understanding of the calls filling the night at the start of spring. It is the wordless voice of longing that resonates within us, the longing to continue, to participate in the sacred life of the world.”
It’s often said that we know the moon better than we know our oceans. An odd thought, considering they constitute 99 per cent of the living space on this planet. Our understanding of the inhabitants of our deep oceans is shallow. One known but often misunderstood creature is the octopus, an eight-limbed predator. It has inspired alien creatures in science fiction, but it is also remarkably intelligent, and strangely familiar if we get closer to it. The author, Montgomery, befriends octopuses across the globe, showing another side to this mollusc.
Our world is full of magical places—one such place is the forest. When we walk through a forest, most of us are unaware that the trees can communicate—that they, like us, have families with whom they share nutrients. Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the social lives of trees and forest etiquette, and puts up a persuasive argument for protecting this living, breathing community, for the benefit of the trees, the planet, and our own mental and physical wellbeing.
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary by Caspar Henderson
Bestiaries were popular illustrated manuscripts in the Middle Ages and typically contained detailed descriptions of exotic species and those native to Western Europe, alongside imaginary animals such as dragons and unicorns. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is another book on this list to expose our ignorance of the organisms with which we share this world; it captures the beauty and weirdness of many living forms we thought we knew but didn’t really, from the Axolotl to the Zebrafish. Writes Henderson: “Life on Earth is basically a giant microbial vat and eukaryotic organisms are merely the bubbles on its surface? Are we—the froth—deluded in valuing ourselves so highly?”
When LSD was first discovered, it was compared to the atom bomb. It was believed that both would shake up society in a significant way. Research into LSD and psilocybin mushrooms was conducted in the past, though the funds dried up, in part a consequence of the recreational use of the drugs during the hippie years. In the last decade, new research is underway, and scientists are again examining how psychedelic drugs might be helpful in psychiatric treatment, and for helping us better understand the nature of consciousness. Pollan explores how psychedelics have been used effectively in different cultures’ rituals, and in turn shaped culture. In taking psychedelic drugs himself and observing others who took them in lab studies, he changed his mind: “The usual antonym for the word “spiritual” is “material.” That at least is what I believed when I began this inquiry—that the whole issue with spirituality turned on a question of metaphysics. Now I’m inclined to think a much better and certainly more useful antonym for “spiritual” might be “egotistical.” Self and Spirit define the opposite ends of a spectrum, but that spectrum needn’t reach clear to the heavens to have meaning for us. It can stay right here on earth. When the ego dissolves, so does a bounded conception not only of our self but of our self-interest. What emerges in its place is invariably a broader, more openhearted and altruistic—that is, more spiritual—idea of what matters in life. One in which a new sense of connection, or love, however defined, seems to figure prominently.” Elsewhere he writes: “You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.”
In the second chapter of Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer tells readers to eat dogs. Among his reasons: many cultures around the world eat dog. Millions of dogs are euthanised yearly in the US and it is costly to dispose of them—their meat is rendered into food for cows. Most people will feel nauseated at the prospect of eating dogs directly—our beloved companions—but regularly eat cows. The author reminds us that life is sacred in all cultures, but the place where we drawn the moral line between what we can kill or can’t is cultural. “If nothing matters, there's nothing to save,” he writes. This so closely follows The Hidden Life of Trees, where we read that perhaps plants have complex lives too. “Save a carrot, eat a vegetarian,” might be a tempting retort in jest, but it would be inaccurate, and is one of the many myths surrounding vegetarianism that Safran Foer debunks. Vegans harm fewer plants, because eating plants directly, rather than feeding them to animals you go on to eat, requires far fewer plants—and involves less deforestation. If research one day proves that plants are sentient beings which feel pain, which isn’t clear at present, veganism would still be the path of minimal harm. “If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to centre our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.” “Can we tell a new story?”
“Humboldt ‘read’ plants as others did books–and to him they revealed a global force behind nature, the movements of civilisations as well as of landmass. No one had ever approached botany in this way.” This is the biography of the Prussian naturalist Alexandra von Humboldt, but also a journey through Western thought. Humboldt, whom many parks, streets and species in South America are named after, was insatiably curious about the natural world and our place in it. He learnt directly from nature, from other scientists, but also from artists including his friend Goethe. “Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings,” writes Andrea Wulf. Reading The Invention of Nature, we witness the division of the natural sciences into the separate scientific disciplines recognised today. But Humboldt, Wulf emphasises, saw nature as an interconnected web of cause and effect. Disrupt the balance and you harm the entire ecosystem; inevitably, that also means causing harm to ourselves. In that respect, he was one of the earliest environmentalists, and there may still be something to learn from this earlier, more holistic perspective. “The effects of the human species’ intervention were already ‘incalculable’, Humboldt insisted, and could become catastrophic if they continued to disturb the world so ‘brutally’. Humboldt would see again and again how humankind unsettled the balance of nature.”
Stepping into an esoteric bookshop can feel like clambering through a dark forest. With this list, we hope you will find one of the many crisscrossing paths through those wild woods. The recommendations here are mainly from Western esotericism, but much of what we think of as Western has at some point come from the East. Many of the books below are available to purchase from our friends at Treadwell’s Books in London.
Illustration by Rachael Olga Lloyd
The Book of English Magic by Richard Heygate and Philip Carr-Gomm
England has a long, albeit quiet history of magic. This book takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of our enchanted past through to our magical present. Along the way, the author explores how magic has both fascinated and scared us. We are introduced to scholars who practised alchemy, authors of fantasy and their magical inspirations, some of the places that were sacred to our ancestors or had a significant role in myths and legends, and the Neopagan beliefs alive today.
That Sense of Wonder: How to Capture the Miracles of Everyday Life by Francesco Dimitri
As children, wonder comes naturally to us. I remember lying on my childhood bedroom floor, at 8, surrounded by beautiful books, open atlases and encyclopaedias. The world was vast and exciting then, and I wanted to explore it. Francesco Dimitri argues this simple impulse, wonder, is the driving force behind many works of scientific enquiry and creative endeavours, from the monuments that grace our skylines to the stories and art that move us. Wonder encourages us to light candles in the dark and set forth into unchartered territory in search of something new. This book explores how life sometimes gets in the way of that. Caught up in a society that values certainty over mysteries, distracted by the burden of mortgage repayments and endless bureaucracy, we can lose that sense of wonder; Dimitri reveals how to reclaim it.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Arguably one of the best starting points for understanding western occultism, practitioners of ritual magic and literary authors still draw inspiration from Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy today. The books were published in 1531 in Paris, Cologne and Antwerp, and are noted for being more scholarly and intellectual in content than many of the other grimoires around at the time. The three books concern themselves with Elemental, Celestial and Intellectual Magic, and include extracts from obscure work by the thinkers such as Pythagoras and Plato. The topics covered include the classical four elements, Kaballah, astrology, the virtues, scrying, alchemy, ritual magic and geomancy. A tome at 1,024 pages, this doesn’t make for light reading.
The Lesser Key of Solomon - anon
An anonymous grimoire from the mid-17th century, The Lesser Key of Solomon is another occult classic—and a good illustrated introduction to demology. It provides detailed descriptions of its 72 daemons, and instructions for successfully evoking and manipulating them. Amazon reviews warn: “not for beginners.” Most readers will read this out of curiosity, rather than a desire to summon spirits. This text is often referenced in films and novels that involve demons.
The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie
For those who have read Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, the content here will be familiar. Borrowing ideas from Kabbalah, Tarot, Theosophy, Freemasonry, Paganism, Astrology and many more, The Golden Dawn puts forward a viable system of magic. When Israeel Regardie published the teaching of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn after the order’s dissolution, Crowley said the publication of this material was “pure theft,” despite having incorporated ritual magic gained from the order in his own magical system. Regardie wanted to ensure the Golden Dawn ritual system wasn’t lost—and wanted to make these ideas accessible to more people.
The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley
This short but dense book feels like it was written during a drug-induced high, though Crowley sustained he was merely transcribing the words of a mysterious messenger, Aiwass, who he encountered in the Egyptian desert. The book has however, like the infamous author himself, been hugely influential in the occult. It remains the central text for Thelemites. The central premise, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” is often misunderstood as “descend into anarchy and do whatever the hell you want.” The true meaning is closer to “find your true path.”
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
Published in 1890, The Golden Bough is a wide-ranging study of comparative religion and myth. Authored by the Scottish anthropologist and folklorist James George Frazer, this books documents the similarities and universal motifs among magical and religious beliefs around the world. The mythologist Joseph Campbell drew heavily from it when writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces, describing The Golden Bough as “monumental.”
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell gained international recognition when George Lucas credited this work as influencing the Star Wars Saga. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949, chronicles the hero’s journey in its many iterations. It’s a classic still used by screenwriters and authors today. Based on an introduction to myth class he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell dissects myths, exposing the universal themes disguised beneath the clothing of a specific cultural context. He also considers the relevance of myths to our lives today.
The Triumph of the Moon by Ronald Hutton
Perhaps the definitive academic history of Neopaganism, and in particular of Wicca, one of the fastest growing homegrown new religions. Hutton examines the history of ritual magic, deity worship, cunning folk, 18th century revivalist movements and secret societies through to strands of modern day witchcraft. Many practitioners of magic today claim an unbroken connection with a Pagan past, which Hutton contests. Hutton maintains an unbiased and rigorously academic objectivity, though is never dismissive. Instead, he argues persuasively that the origins of Wicca go beyond Gardner, and sees Neopaganism as an arena for creativity.
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
Animism is the belief that all objects, places and creatures possess a soul or spirit. But what relevance does animism have in our modern world? Through a series of case studies, Professor Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. Emphasised is the maltreatment of animism, often patronised by social scientists of the past. As we face global warming, one big takeaway is the ecological implications of animism. Maoris, we’re told, see themselves as “an integral part of nature.” They feel the have “the responsibility to take care of the whenua (land) and, tangata (people).”
The Earth, The Gods, and the Soul by Brendan Myers
Europe's first philosophers were Pagan and The Gods, the Earth, and the Soul restores the spiritual coherence of that intellectual legacy for the modern reader. Arguing the work of ancient sages across Europe sets out Humanism, Pantheism, and Platonism are core tenets, Myers' provides an accessible introduction to each in turn. An inspiring and rigorous review of the moral and conceptual lessons that Pagan ways have to teach.
Witches, Sluts and Feminists by Kristen J. Sollee
“Witch,” like “slut” and “feminist,” has often been used pejoratively. Sollee has noted these terms also pertain to a lineage of resistance. The book presents a compelling argument for reclaiming these terms—and archetypes. The witch, says Solleee, is “someone who can shift perceptions and create change.” We are shown, among other things, how Hillary Clinton was often cast as a witch during her campaign, the reconsideration of the term ‘witch’ during the suffrage movement, and the fear among men of women’s bodily autonomy. The author also reminds us of the continuing persecution of witches in some parts of the world.
What is a Witch? by Pam Grossman
What does the word ‘witch’ evoke for you? Written by Pam Grossman and illustrated by Tin Can Forest, this graphic novel-come-poetry collection-come-grimoire-come-illustrated manuscript is a deep and beautiful reflection on the witch archetype—that ultimate icon of feminine power. “Daughters, mothers, queens, virgins, wives, et al. derive meaning from their relation to another person,” said Grossman in 2013. “Witches, on the other hand, have power on their own terms.”
A Treasury of British Folklore by Dee Dee Chainey
A concise yet entertaining collection of folk stories, legends, and superstitions from Britain. Many of us know about Maypoles, fairies and kelpies, but do we know the beliefs behind them? It becomes apparent while reading that many of our regional stories and rituals derive from a universal need to converse with nature.