Explore an Idea
Follow a single idea across traditions.
17 concepts
Not every question fits a tradition. These pages start from an idea and gather the texts, authors and guides where it appears, from late antiquity to the twentieth century.
Each list is chosen by hand. Where the archive holds only a few relevant works, the page says so rather than padding the list.
The Philosopher's Stone and Prima Materia
The goal of the Great Work, and the formless matter it begins from.
Alchemical Transformation
Dissolution, purification and recombination, in the furnace and in the soul.
Divine Wisdom (Sophia)
Wisdom as a divine being, a revealed teaching, or a hidden knowledge.
Theurgy
Ritual action that seeks union with the gods.
Angels
Messengers, intelligences and names of power.
Demons and Spirits
Catalogues of spirits, and the literature that feared or dismissed them.
The Enochian Language
The angelic tongue recorded in John Dee's and Edward Kelley's sessions.
The Tree of Life
Ten sefirot and twenty-two paths, from Jewish mysticism to occult diagrams.
Tarot
A card game that became a book of symbols.
Correspondences
"As above, so below": the web of sympathies linking stars, metals, plants and names.
Number and Sacred Geometry
Harmony, proportion and the mystical meaning of number.
Initiation
Ordeal, grade and rebirth in secret fraternities and schools.
Mystical Union
The soul’s approach to, or absorption in, the divine.
Reincarnation and Karma
Rebirth as taught in Indian traditions and reinterpreted in the West.
The Astral Plane
The subtle world between matter and spirit.
Spirit Communication
Séances, mediums and the attempt to test them.
Elementals and Elemental Magic
Sylphs, undines, gnomes and salamanders.