Useful Occult Books

So I thought I'd list some of the books I've found useful in my own occult work.

Kabbalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self Transformation by Lyam Thomas Christopher

After a few months of doing the LBRP + MPR daily and haphazardly firing off Chaos Magic sigils while pretending to follow a different magical paradigm each week, I realized I needed some sort of rigorous course of training if I were ever to move beyond "dabbler" and into the realm of the adept. Although I had found some aspects of Kraig's Modern Magick appealing, I dove into this one instead, largely due to how exhaustive it is. If you follow the ~3.5 year program in this course, you will:

• Invoke the forces corresponding to the Sephiroth of the Golden Dawn Grades from Neophyte through Adeptus Minor - both the elements AND the planets.
• Build the Tree of Life in each of the four worlds into your sphere. This allows for VERY easy invocation of a given sephiroth once you have 'graduated' and are off on your own.
• Construct each Enochian tablet, and learn the Golden Dawn enochian system inside out from a theoretical standpoint.
• Perform a wide array of projects and exercises, which will teach you how to master each of these sphere's in your day to day life.

It uses Israel Regardie's The Golden Dawn as a companion piece, and includes several excellent "required reading" books for each grade. These books are on a broad range of topics, including the Kabbalah, Egyptian Mythology and Magic, Astrology, Tarot, Practical and Psychological Alchemy, the Chakras, Jungian Psychology, Zen Buddhism, Dee/Kelley Purist Enochiana, and the general Western Mystery Tradition. I would actually say that every book he recommends are also worth reading.

One warning - it's a lengthy curriculum, and you should be prepared to finish it once started. If you are unsure that you want to undertake such a long operation, I'd suggest working with Don Kraig's Modern Magick instead. In that, you'll dive into practical operations such as talisman creation and etc pretty quickly. I very often use Kraig's method to create talismans, though, for reason's I'll explain below, I don't use his "long form" talisman consecration.

Of course, once I finished the course outlined book - I realized that there was an entire universe of practical magic at my finger tips. I also had a better understanding of how I would use it. I was quite disheartened, though, after reading Zalewski's "Talismans and Evocations" of the Golden Dawn. I noticed just how pompous and convoluted a lot of the Golden Dawn methods are. I still enjoy the Watchtower ritual, as well as Lyam's Fourfold Body of Light and Planetary invocations, but I'll be damned if I'm going to repeat the friggin' Neophyte ritual every time I want to evoke a spirit or consecrate a talisman. It turns out, traditional neoplatonic/hermetic magic is actually far more simple, and I haven't seen any degradation in potency. Here are some books I've found especially useful.

The Sorcerer's Secrets by Jason Miller

I really enjoy Jason Miller's approach, as it is a bit more down to earth than a lot of the Golden Dawn methods - and it focuses on strategies to help put your mundane house in order so that magical techniques are more likely to succeed. The magical techniques are essentially a combination of greek folk magic, meditation techniques, renaissance magic a la Agrippa, and hoodoo-influenced techniques. Miller is definitely a "spirit model" type of guy. While the Golden Dawn uses psychodrama to bypass the rational mind, Miller encourages creating a subjective reality where spirits are all around you and ready to come when they are called.

Neoplatonic Basics, Modern Angelic Grimoire, and The Genius and Evil Daimon by Rufus Opus

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These books, a long with the above book by Jason Miller, will quite literally change how you view magic if you are coming from a strictly Golden Dawn or Thelemic background. They take a neo-platonic approach to high magic, with influences coming from The Divine Pymander (Hermetic creation myth), Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and The Art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystal, which was attributed to Trithemius but appeared in Francis Barrett's The Magus. It provides a fairly simple method whereby one can evoke archangels, spirits, and demons, as well as divine the name of, and contact, the Genius (a slightly lower manifestation of the HGA). Just be ready for a perpetual art project, as you'll constantly be building tables of practice, talismans, lamens, spirit pots, and all sorts of other trinkets.

Post-Modern Magic and The Magic, Power, Language, Symbol by Patrick Dunn

Patrick Dunn's work goes a long way in unifying the more psychological model of chaos magic with the spirit/energy model of ceremonial magic, by introducing us to the "information theory of magic." It also provides examples of how one can take the basic principles of any system of magic, and adapt them to suit your needs.

Enochian Vision Magick by Lon Milo DuQuette

Although powerful, Enochian magic can be somewhat of a nuisance to work with from an intellectual standpoint. While John Dee wrote some invocations for various archangels of the tablets, there was never a satisfactory workable system developed for the non-renaissance magician, in my opinion. On the flip side, the Golden Dawn turned Enochian magic into a very practical system, but with two major flaws: (1) the pyramid square system is a complete clusterfuck that tries to jam as many correspondences to each letter as possible, and (2) they left out 1/3 of the enochian system, the Heptarchia Mystica. This crucial third included the planetary spirits that governed the elemental Great Table of the Watchtowers (what the GD called the elemental tablets). Fortunately, DuQuette has come to the rescue and seamlessly blends the tools of the Heptarchia Mystica into the Golden Dawn elemental and planetary correspondences of the Watchtower entities. I've used his methods for years, and had astounding results with enochian magic. Like with RO's system - be prepared for a perpetual art project - you'll be making a ring of solomon, the holy table, ensigns of creation talismans, the sigillum dei ameth, the holy lamen, and (optionally) the round table of Nalvage.

Qabala, Qliphoth, and Goetic Magic and Uthark: The Nightside of the Runes by Thomas Karlsson

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I used to think the "Left Hand Path" (LHP) was the realm of black metal fans who wanted to play at being occultists in order to look "dangerous" and angsty teenagers who wanted to curse their math teacher. That changed when I discovered Thomas Karlsson's work. Now, I see it as a valid initiatory path whereby one finds light in the darkness and becomes God of their own reality. Karlsson gives one of the best explanations of the Qliphoth I've seen in writing, as well as advice on how to approach them. He also provides useful information in Uthark on how to path-work with runes between worlds on Yggdrasil in a manner comparable to using the Tarot on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Both books are highly recommended.

Finally - it's great to have a collection of grimoires on hand, as well as classical texts like Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and John Dee's Five Books of Mystery. These provide great references for seals, sigils, spirits and other tools that can be used for talismans and evocations. Just avoid nut jobs like Joseph Lisiewski who think you have to follow grimoires word for word. We don't need more SPCAs and Police Departments across the country freaking out over occultists killing chickens and cats. One satanic panic was enough. Lets not trigger another.