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/lit/ - Literature


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16806304 No.16806304 [Reply] [Original]

Looking for something brief that will give me a broad historical, philosophical and practical understanding.

>> No.16806318

>>16806304
occult is a meme.
no philosophical significance.

>> No.16806337

>>16806318
Not what I asked

>> No.16806358

>>16806337
de occulta philosophia-cornelius agrippa

>> No.16806940

>>16806304
Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction

>> No.16806946

>>16806304
Start with the Greeks

>> No.16807010

Colin Wilson. The Occult. Extensive historical account, with all the major figures, from ancient to modern.

>> No.16807270

>>16806304
Start with Old Turkic Runes

>> No.16807409

>>16806304
Read about Gnosticism. Once you understand the basics, you’ll soon learn that most occult leanings are based heavily or in some cases entirely on it.

>> No.16807415

>>16806318
>no philosophical significance
Wrong

>> No.16807434

>>16806304
what do you mean by occult?

>> No.16807440

Not with Acephale. At best they are not really occult, at worst they are occult in an evil and shallow way. Try Colin Wilson's The Occult for a fun intro, then Hanegraaff, Faivre, and Versluis for more scholarly treatments. Frances Yates' books on Bruno and the Rosicrucians are interesting intros to hermeticism.

>> No.16807460

Anything by Crowley and then just read a few Buddhist and eastern philosophy wikis.

>> No.16807461

>>16807434
Usually it's used almost synonymously with esoteric, the difference being that occult tends to focus more on operations while esoteric tends to focus more on principles/theory

>> No.16807500

>>16806304
Read the Kibalion, its very low entry but will give you a grasp of what are you going to study.
Then read that Elaine Pagel's book on gnosticism.

>> No.16807510

>>16807500
I heard it's filled with blatant lies and not actually a good starting point

>> No.16807523

>>16807510
By that point of view, every esoteric book you encounter will be full of blantant lies.

>> No.16807529

>>16807523
No I mean as in it deliberately distorts and lies about the things it speaks, not that it's merely misinformed

>> No.16807571

>>16807529
Its an entry level book, and gets some points of the study of esoterism. Also it's less that 100 pages. You should read it and judge it by for yourself

>> No.16807578

>>16807571
I read it a while ago, and I know that it's solid. I just heard from people who seem more knowledgeable that it's not as good as purported

>> No.16807775
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16807775

>>16806304

>> No.16808136

>>16806304
Just make it up as you go. That’s what all the grimoire writers did. I guess you could look at books to see the kinds of stuff other people made up, but believing in occult authority or wisdom lessens your magical powers lol.

>> No.16808163

>>16807460
Any recs for Crowley?

>> No.16808168

>>16808163
Liber Oz

>> No.16808493

>>16806304
Bataille isn't occult.

>> No.16808578

>>16808493
>He doesn't know

>> No.16808608

>>16806304
you are going to lose your soul, anon
stray away from these things.

>> No.16808629

>>16806304
Secret teachings of all ages is a book

>> No.16808674
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16808674

>>16806304
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRVQD4FKPrY

>> No.16808683
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16808683

>>16808608
>>16808674
OOOOOoooOOOOOOOOoooOOOOOOOoooOO

>> No.16808695

>>16807460
>just read a few Buddhist and eastern philosophy wikis
Yikes

>> No.16808703

>>16807529
That is often the case with esoteric texts.

>> No.16808712

>>16808578
>left hand path
>yeah we r hardcore!!!! b-but please don't be an antisemite!

>> No.16808805

>>16808712
Are you mentally ill?

>> No.16808875
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16808875

>>16806304
Acéphale are a bunch of degenerates. Technocratic Sophist Gnosticism is France's future.

>> No.16808958

>>16806946
Theogony?

>> No.16808974

>>16808958
A collection of myths and then the Iliad

>> No.16809180

>>16806337
Don't care, you're a huge faggot for asking anyway.

>> No.16809199

Renaissance paganism has going away the most based esoteric and occult culture

>> No.16809343

>>16809199
Lol, this adds another meaning to "neoclassical."

>> No.16810813

>>16806304
Iamblichus: De mysteriis (On the Mysteries) Emma Clarke translation

>> No.16810936
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16810936

hijacking this thread to ask if Rudolf Steiner is actually any good or if he's just overrated fluff for hippies. if valuable, where should I start?

>> No.16810955

>>16810936
I heard he equates Sorath with Lucifer and Ahriman based on a sigil and lulxD

I'm sure he has worthwhile stuff but I'd be wary

>> No.16811149

>>16808974
No Odyssey? :(

>> No.16811238
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16811238

>>16807409
What's a good starting place for Gnosticism? Is there any especially definitive work on it?

>> No.16811258

>>16811149
No, never the odyssey. You may read all books BUT the odyssey

But actually the odyssey is even better because it deals with the topics of personal struggle and redemption and ascension

>> No.16811262

>>16807775
I was going to give these a shot, but then I saw how close you were to getting quads, but failed and it turned me off.

>> No.16811270

>>16806304
Freud's works on dreams and their interpretations are key to understanding the occult, and the esoteric, so depending on what you want to get out of studying the occult, that would be a decent starting point to the realization and understanding that the world is not necessarily as it seems.

>> No.16811273

>>16806304
Dao de jing. Bhagavad Gita. Phaedo. Gospels. These are some basis.

>> No.16811280

>>16811270
Erich Fromm's Forgotten Language makes a synthesis of freudian and jungian dream interpretation

>> No.16811284

>>16806304
Occult shit is gay.

>> No.16811344

>>16811262
You're stupid as fuck

>> No.16811371

>>16807578
>>16807571 is right in saying its entry-level, which is what turns many away from it. Its authorship claims are also dubious, as is the case with many esoteric texts.
People treat it like a holy grail when it's really a field guide.

>> No.16811379

>>16808163
Liber IV

>> No.16811417

>>16807415
he isnt, occult is ooga-booga bullshit. Philosophers only studied it because humans are prone to error.

>> No.16811530

>>16811238
Kurt Rudolf - Gnosis
Hans Jonas - The Gnostic Religion
Jaques Lacarriere - The Gnostics

>> No.16811769
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16811769

>> No.16811783
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16811783

>>16806304
read the Neoplatonists and the Hermeticism texts
then do Agrippa
I'd recommend Eriugena's Periphyseon as well as the works of Meister Eckhart and Pseudo-Dionysius

>> No.16812256

>>16806304
>the occult
>something brief
>that will give me a broad historical, philosophical and practical understanding.
Literally impossible.

>> No.16812280

>>16811417
Have you read the hermetic texts?

>> No.16812299

>>16806304
just keep playing your japanese role playing games

>> No.16812307

>>16806304
Literally just follow esoteric twitter users and say things at random until you figure out what words do what, mean what, and mean/do nothing

>> No.16812328

>>16812307
Not even wrong

>> No.16813903

>>16811238
A good starting place is The Apocryphon of John. As the other anon suggested, after than you can read The Gnostics by Jacques Lacarrière, The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism by Kurt Rudolph, and I'd also add The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism by Ioan Petru Culianu and A History of Gnosticism by Giovanni Filoramo.

>> No.16814503

>>16806940
this

>> No.16814562

>>16806304
read a well cited academic book that is based around the historical facts alongside the primary texts which interest you. then maybe repeat the process with more books. then use the broad knowledge you have gained to identify which areas you want to pursue further and look for more specific academic literature about those areas & read more of the primary literature.

its a subject you have to be quite careful with because there is a LOT of non-academic literature by modern occultists that pretends to be authoritative. and a lot of them are heavily invested in this stuff and project their personal biases, beliefs & practices onto any and every historical source they know.

colin wilson is not a good source, crowley is one of the worst, dont read the kybalion because you will turn into a retard, whatever you do dont fucking start with jung or freud.

faivre, hanegraaff, goodricke-clarke, and so on are proper, fairly recent scholars who obviously have their own biases but aren't going to flat out lie to you about historical facts or fill your head with outdated theories.

if you start at the beginning and proceed chronologically then you are going to develop a good understanding; if you start with modern occultists who are imposing their own beliefs on ancient texts then you will come away with a bad understanding

>> No.16815406

>>16811783
Seconding Pseudo-Dionysius

>> No.16815681

Always kept this in handy

https://mega.nz/folder/jlEwhYyJ#iK4mVC4y5iwk_cr3eIpX4g

>> No.16815810

>>16814562
The problem with this excessively distrustful and secular scholar worshiping approach is that only half of being "into the occult" is serious study of primary sources. The other half is the initial making sense of the hundreds of names and ideas and schools that all dabbling occultists seem to have some familiarity with, so you can decide what you want to read deeply.

I guarantee you the scholars you recommend were themselves raised on a diet of Wilson, Schure, Hall, etc. Goodrick-Clarke is clearly some kind of Theosophist. Most writers like Godwin and Versluis are clearly believers, I think Faivre too. Many of the best hermetic and platonic scholars are, well, hermeticists and platonists. You are getting bias no matter what you read. Even if that bias is secularism, which might be the worst one actually.

You don't have to be or become a Theosophist to benefit from a collation of materials written by one, just like you don't need to be a Muslim to benefit from Annemarie Schimmel. Obviously it's retarded to 100% believe the first book you pick up and become a card-carrying Blavatskian, and certain things, like Crowley or Jung, that are only interested in presenting everything through the lens of their own system or only presenting their system in general, have to be read with care, and with it constantly in mind that when you read Crowley you are reading Crowley, not "the occult" in a general and transparent way. But hopefully that's all obvious.

Overviews are much less problematic. Wilson's is just fine. And if you're interested in the occult anyway, you shouldn't mind so much investigating the peculiar views of a given writer.

Another good overview is The Occult Underground. Surprise, also written by a believer.

>> No.16815960

>>16807409
You mean Hermeticism.

>> No.16816307

>>16815810
the point is that, regardless of their biases, their work does not distort historical facts or outright lie about anything. YES there will be biases; that's why you have to read the primary sources alongside. Once you have that grounding its fine to see what modern occultists think about ancient texts, but if you just wade in at the deep end you are bound to end up as another retard with a completely mistaken view of contentious things like kabbalah or alchemy

>> No.16816339

>>16811238
'gnosticism' is really a made up umbrella term that early christians used to group together certain types of heresy. its better to look into individual things which are in this group like sethianism, manichaeism, valentinianism, hermeticism, mandaeism, e.t.c.

>> No.16816506

>>16811258
Lol
"You may read from any Greek epic, but not this one."
Book of /Lit/erati 4:20

>> No.16817797

>>16816307
Tell me where Colin Wilson distorts a single thing in The Occult

>> No.16818103

>>16817797
whole book is built on the false premise that automatism is central to occultism, when it is really only central in some 20th century thinkers who (mostly) did not even self identify as occultists

>> No.16818145

>>16818103
You're going to have to pull up and paste some quotes to support this.
I think you're talking about Wilson's idea of The Robot but he doesn't consider that the orientation of the work.
He does not misrepresent historical facts at any point.
Jake Stratton-Kent is a fucking meme

>> No.16818372

Read the Picatrix

>> No.16818453

>>16818103
This is not a fair representation of Wilson's surveys at all. Have you read them or are you just assuming based on surveys of his thought you have read elsewhere? Wouldn't that be ironic?

Probably one of the biggest criticisms you could make of Wilson is that he can be journalistic. He was willing to investigate anything and everything. But he usually serves it up to you on the assumption that you want it fresh and not strained through his ideas first.

>> No.16818513

>>16811258
Didn't Porphyry write about the cave of the nymphs in the Odyssey? It is required reading.

>> No.16819857

Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Yates

>> No.16819897

http://www.occult-mysteries.org/

>> No.16819914

>>16811262
Based.

>> No.16820601
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16820601

>>16814562
Why does reading the kybalion turn you into a retard? Genuinely curious. Obviously you should read something critically and not just immediately accept assertions, but it's definitely one of the more accessible books on hermetic philosophy.

Regardless, what would reccommend for a curious mind?

>> No.16820688

Would /lit/ agree that there a number of powerful influential figures in society that take part in the occult? What do they see in the esoteric that attracts them?

>> No.16820703

>>16807010
This

>> No.16820751

>>16820688
Is this a thinly veiled attempt to have people buy into pizzagate or something?

Humans have always yearned for the "truth". Modern interest in esoterica is just another manifestation in this, and definitely a less interesting one then back when Crowley was fucking everyone in Egypt and shooting up heroin.

Where's the Great Beast of the modern age?

>> No.16820761

>>16820688
Yes. But it's the other way around. Most elites are materialist bugmen. But the deeper the mover the harder it is to comprehend, therefore occultists are set up by their study to be 'available to' analysis of deep movement ie; capable of comprehending them. Or to put it the other way, the deeper the study the more it looks like an 'occult' especially because the further back in time you have to reach to find metaphors that express deep ideas.

Of that set of truly 'deep' thinkers only some are willing to get involved. (In Spengler's terms there are men who are 'in,' 'against' or 'above' time.) These operators are distributed through elite networks, heavily disguised, and have a high 'gravity' in terms of outcomes and social maneuver. So their operation can only be inferred.

>> No.16820769

>>16811238
There's no substitute for Irenaeus' Against Heresies and Hippolytus' Philosophumena as primary sources. Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius' Panarion as well.

>> No.16820776

>>16807578
What the Kybalion talks about is more New Thought than occultism. Manly P. Hall is a better overview.

>> No.16820822

>>16820761
Surely these 'operators' have agendas or tendencies that are easily identified by the materialist bugmen in certain influential circles and act in opposition or call out the occult figures?

>> No.16821144

>>16820822
You would expect so but in practice the NPCs lack the imagination to identify the conspirators and occult practitioners are by definition experts in revealing, and by extension, concealing. That which they do not want seen remains under cover, not that they need to exert much effort because most bureaucrats don't have the intelligence to conceive of grand meta-narratives because they spend all their time operating literalist and mathematical conceptual models. Remember serious occultism "doesn't exist."

>> No.16821906

>>16806940
>>16807010
which one

>> No.16822826

>>16815681
Holy shit, thank you

>> No.16822859

>>16821906
both plus occult underground

>> No.16823467

So for the uninitiated, what's the difference between the occult and ancient religion, or are they classified as the same thing?

>> No.16823554
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16823554

>>16806304
Manly P. Hall's "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" in an encyclopedia of Western occultism and better than 99% of what was mentioned in this thread.

>> No.16823579

>>16823467
Similar to the difference between exo- and esoteric, but not equivalent. Occult means hidden and usually thereby refers to a process of shedding-light, i.e. an operation. Whereas religion is more "what it says on bottle and you're good"

>> No.16823593
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16823593

Common curiosity never comes close to the light.
Only those who seek the truth are allowed to knock on the gate.

>> No.16823602

>>16823554
Hall has always felt suspect to me. Most authors on the occult obviously have ulterior motivations, but Hall's struck me as a unique flavor of subtle malice.
I think he could see the Singularity on the horizon, and wanted us all to row faster.

>> No.16823609

>>16823593
Many know not the difference between what they want to be truth and what they consider to be true. Doesn't make them seekers of un-truth

>> No.16823637

>>16823554
and make sure to snag the Jubilee edition of it.

>> No.16823643

>>16823637
What's the difference?

>> No.16823674

>>16823602
Why malice?

>> No.16823768

>>16823554
My one quibble is that his interpretation of Tarot is pretty off base; Paul F. Case and even Aleister Crowley are better.

>> No.16823780

>>16823643
has the original full size illustrations

>> No.16823856

>>16823768
So much of Western Occultism is utter bullshit from the get-go.
Eliphas Levi is a large source of this bullshittery.
He's the origin of the erroneous idea that Kabbalah, Egyptian Magic, and Tarot have anything to do with each other whatsoever (they don't)

>> No.16823890
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16823890

>>16823856
Well, let's say that Case and Crowley do a better job of explaining the modern occult Tarot as popularized by Waite. But there is clearly a connection to alchemy that Place talks about.

>> No.16824039

>>16823579
Thanks man

>> No.16824068

>>16823890
You can say that, but leave me out of it. Tarot is just another game card.

>> No.16824143

>>16824068
D-do you believe in kabbalah but not divination?

>> No.16824159

>>16824143
Belief is not required.
Tarot exists, divination exists, Kabbalah exists.
They simply have nothing to do with each other

>> No.16824208
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16824208

>>16824068
Hermetic and Neoplatonic thought was en vogue among the learned classes of the age, so I don't find it as impossible as some might think when viewing it through a modern lens. It's the later interpretations of the French school that seem rather fanciful.