The Library of Teachings

The Corpus Hermeticum

The Hermetica

Hermeticism · Greek, c. 1st–3rd century CE

A collection of seventeen short Greek dialogues attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, 'thrice-great Hermes', a fusion of the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. Written in Roman Egypt, they teach that God is Mind, that the cosmos is alive and full of the divine, and that a human being, who carries a spark of that Mind, can return to the source through knowledge. When Marsilio Ficino translated them into Latin in 1463 (printed 1471), Renaissance readers believed them older than Moses, and they shaped magic, art and philosophy for two centuries.

The Emerald Tablet

Tabula Smaragdina

Hermeticism and alchemy · Arabic, c. 8th–9th century; Latin from the 12th century

A short, cryptic text of about a dozen lines, said to have been found in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus inscribed on a tablet of emerald. Its earliest known version is Arabic, in a book attributed to 'Balinas' (Apollonius of Tyana). Translated into Latin in the twelfth century, it became the founding text of European alchemy. Its most famous line gives us 'as above, so below'.

The Kybalion

New Thought and modern Hermeticism · English, 1908

A short book published in Chicago in 1908 by 'Three Initiates', now generally attributed to the New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson. It presents seven 'Hermetic Principles' as ancient teachings. Despite its title and claims, it is a modern work that blends Hermetic themes with American New Thought, but it remains one of the most widely read introductions to Hermetic ideas.

The Gospel of Thomas

Early Christianity and Gnosis · Greek fragments c. 200 CE; Coptic text c. 340 CE

A collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, with no narrative of his birth, death or resurrection. Greek fragments were found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt in 1897–1903; the complete Coptic text came to light in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. Many sayings parallel the canonical Gospels; others are mysterious calls to inner knowledge and self-discovery.

The Apocryphon of John

The Secret Book of John

Sethian Gnosis · Greek original c. 2nd century; Coptic copies 4th century

The most complete account of the classic Gnostic myth. The risen Christ reveals to the apostle John the unknowable Monad, the emanation of Barbelo and the Aeons, Sophia's fall, the birth of the ignorant creator Yaldabaoth and his archons, and the way the divine spark was hidden in humanity. It survives in four Coptic copies, three from Nag Hammadi and one in the Berlin Codex; Irenaeus knew a version around 180 CE.

Pistis Sophia

Gnosis · Coptic, c. 3rd–4th century

A long Gnostic dialogue preserved in the Askew Codex, bought by the London physician Anthony Askew in 1773 and now in the British Library. The risen Jesus teaches his disciples, among whom Mary Magdalene is the most prominent questioner, about the heavenly realms, and recounts the fall of Pistis Sophia ('Faith-Wisdom') and her thirteen repentances as she is pursued by hostile powers and finally rescued.

Sefer Yetzirah and the Tree of Life

The Book of Formation

Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah · Hebrew, c. 2nd–6th century CE (dating debated)

A brief, ancient Hebrew text explaining how God created the world through 'thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom': the ten sefirot (numbers or dimensions) and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, divided into three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples. Later Kabbalah, especially the Zohar (c. 1280), developed the sefirot into the diagram called the Tree of Life, which Christian and Hermetic Kabbalists and the Golden Dawn mapped onto the tarot and astrology.

The Enochian Records of Dee and Kelley

Renaissance angel magic · English and Latin manuscripts, 1582–1589

The diaries of the Elizabethan scholar John Dee recording his sessions with the scryer Edward Kelley, in which angels were said to dictate a new language, an alphabet of 21 letters, the 48 (in practice 19) Calls or Keys, great tables of letters (later called the Watchtowers) and a seal, the Sigillum Dei Aemeth. Part was published by Meric Casaubon in 1659 to discredit Dee; the rest survives in the British Library.

The Book of Enoch

1 Enoch

Second Temple Judaism; Ethiopian Orthodox scripture · Aramaic, c. 300 BCE – 1st century CE; complete in Ge'ez

An ancient collection of five books attributed to Enoch, the man who 'walked with God' (Genesis 5:24). It tells of the Watchers, angels who descended and taught humanity forbidden arts; Enoch's journeys through heaven and the ends of the earth; a treatise on the courses of sun and moon; dream visions of history; and an epistle of wisdom. It is quoted in the New Testament (Jude 14–15) and is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; Aramaic fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Picatrix

Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, 'The Goal of the Wise'

Arabic and Latin astral magic · Arabic, c. 10th–11th century; Latin 1256

A vast Arabic compendium of astral magic, compiled in al-Andalus and translated into Spanish and then Latin at the court of Alfonso X of Castile in 1256. It teaches how to make talismans at astrologically chosen moments, describes the 28 mansions of the moon, the images of the decans and the prayers to the planets of various traditions, all set within a Neoplatonic philosophy of a living, interconnected cosmos.

Three Books of Occult Philosophy

De occulta philosophia libri tres

Renaissance occult philosophy · Latin, 1533 (first draft 1510)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's great synthesis of Renaissance magic, organised by the three worlds: Book I the elemental or natural world (properties of stones, herbs and animals), Book II the celestial world (number, geometry, the planets and their magic squares and seals), Book III the intellectual or divine world (religion, angels, divine names and Kabbalah). Translated into English in 1651 by 'J.F.', it became the encyclopaedia of Western magic.

The Eddas and Runic Lore

Norse and Germanic · Old Norse, written c. 1220–1270

The two Eddas are our main sources for Norse mythology. The Prose Edda was written by the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson around 1220 as a handbook for poets. The Poetic Edda is a collection of older poems preserved in the Codex Regius (c. 1270). Among them, the Hávamál tells how Odin hung on the world tree for nine nights to win the runes, and the Sigrdrífumál lists runes of victory, ale, help and speech. With the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems, they form the foundation of modern rune lore.

A History of the Tarot

Card games and Western esotericism · Italy, 1440s to the present

The tarot began in the courts of northern Italy in the 1440s as *carte da trionfi*, cards with a fifth suit of allegorical trumps, used for a trick-taking game. The hand-painted Visconti-Sforza decks of Milan are among the oldest survivors. Printed decks such as the Tarot de Marseille spread the game across Europe. In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed the cards preserved ancient Egyptian wisdom; Etteilla produced the first deck designed for divination (c. 1789); Éliphas Lévi linked the trumps to the Hebrew letters (1856); and the Golden Dawn built a complete system of correspondences. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck (1909), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, and Crowley and Harris's Thoth deck (painted 1938–43) shaped modern reading.