Textual Families
How texts descend from, borrow from, and echo one another.
8 families
Some books make most sense as part of a lineage. Each family below follows a group of related texts in approximate chronological order and labels every link, so that a translation is never confused with a loose influence.
The Solomonic Grimoire Family
From the Testament of Solomon to the Lemegeton and its descendants.
The Hermetica
The Greek philosophical Hermetica, their Latin reception and modern echoes.
The Rosicrucian Manifestos
Three anonymous German publications, 1614–1616, and the responses they provoked.
John Dee and the Enochian Material
Dee’s own works, the angelic records and their later adaptation.
Kabbalistic Textual Families
Sefer Yetzirah, the Zohar, and their Latin and occult afterlives.
Alchemical Emblem Books
Image-driven alchemy of the seventeenth century.
Theosophical Foundational Works
Blavatsky’s major books and the second generation that systematised them.
Thelemic Holy Books
The Book of the Law and the writings Crowley built around it.
How Relationships Are Labelled
Root text: The earliest surviving text the family is organised around.
Direct textual relationship: Shares or reworks text, or is a translation or edition, of an earlier member (supported by manuscript or textual scholarship).
Influence: Draws on ideas, names or structures from earlier members without reproducing their text.
Similar tradition: Belongs to the same current or genre; no textual dependence is claimed.