ecosophia | Magic Monday

It's almost midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.

The picture? I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. Quite a while ago we reached Israel Regardie, and then chased his lineage back through Aleister Crowley et al. After he left Crowley, however, Regardie also spent a while studying with this week's honoree, the redoubtable Violet Firth Evans, better known to generations of occultists as Dion Fortune. Born in Wales and raised in a Christian Science family, Fortune got into occultism after a stint as a Freudian lay therapist -- that was an option in her time. She was active in the Theosophical Society, belonged to two different branches of the Golden Dawn, studied with a number of teachers, and then founded her own magical order, the Fraternity (now Society) of the Inner Light. She also wrote some first-rate magical novels and no shortage of books and essays on occultism, including The Cosmic Doctrine, the twentieth century's most important work of occult philosophy. I'm pleased to be only four degrees of separation from her.

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~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

… and I promptly forgot to ask my third question… :-)

To JMG and everybody else: Can anybody recommend a good source (or sources) about the history of German occultism? Books, websites, … in German or English. Something like the information about the history of American occultism which JMG has posted on the .net blog occasionally.

I just want to get a (sane and somewhat trustworthy) overview of what existed: main schools, viewpoints, developments, important people and names, … (mainly about the last two or three centuries, but recommendations which go further back are equally welcome).

Thanks!

Milkyway

You could do a lot worse than starting with Karl Kiesewetter's large volumes on the history of German occultism. Since he died in 1895, all of his published works ought to be in the public domain by now, and available online.

For more recent work check out the books and articles of Hans Thomas Hakl, who is still alive, and has built an enormous library of primary documentation..

Wouter J. Hanegraaff is focused more broadly on esotericism than occultism. He had made a lot of his publications available on academia.edu, where one can downlaod them for free. He usually writes in English. He is one of the editors of Brill's excellent two-volume Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2005), which covers German esotericists along with other Western ones.

Robert,

Thanks a lot!! :-)

Milkyway

What Robert said. ;-) That's not a field of occult history in which I'm adequately versed.

Frater Acher ( theomagica.com ) recommends Volker Lechler's books (only in German) on occultism history. I'd just point you to his blog archive if it worked properly ATM.

(And his reviews of 2 of Emil Stejnar's books ( https://theomagica.com/blog/book-review-emil-stejnars-the-four-elements-the-secret-key-to-spiritual-power , https://theomagica.com/blog/book-review-emil-stejnars-magic-with-astrology ) may have had something to do with them now existing in English.)

Magic Monday

History of German occultism

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