Esoteric Texts

131 entries. Click any to see everything it connects to.

The written sources of the Western esoteric tradition: the Hermetic corpus, alchemical and magical treatises, grimoires, and the foundational works of modern occultism. Each entry records what the text is, who wrote or compiled it where that is known, roughly when, and which tradition it belongs to. Attribution and date are uncertain or disputed for many of them, and the entries say so where that is the case.

Facts

Overview

Entries in the Atlas: 131

Origins

Era of Composition: From late antiquity: the Hermetica, the Gnostic writings and the Greek magical papyri, c. 1st-4th century CE 1
Place of Origin: Graeco-Roman Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, whence the tradition passed to the Arabic world and to Latin Europe 1
Whose Classification This Is: Western esotericism was constituted as an academic field by Antoine Faivre, who held the EPHE chair for the history of esoteric and mystical currents from 1979, and by Wouter Hanegraaff, professor at Amsterdam from 1999. 2

Structure

Structure: A largely pseudonymous literature: much of it circulated under prestigious ancient names, Hermes Trismegistus, Solomon, Moses, and the traditional ascription is usually centuries earlier than the date of composition. 2

Status

Standing as a Comparative Category: A standard analytic category in the study of religion 2

Sources

The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 2008, ch. 1
Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2012, ch. 1

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The Written Sources of Western Esotericism

This category holds the written sources of the Western esoteric tradition: the Hermetic corpus, the alchemical and magical treatises, the grimoires, and the foundational works of modern occultism. These are the books in which the systems of magic, alchemy, Kabbalah and astrology were set down and passed on.

Each entry records what the text is, who wrote or compiled it where that can be established, roughly when, and what it contains, a body of practical instruction, a philosophy, a collection of spirits and their offices, or a synthesis of several traditions.

Pseudonymity and the Problem of Dating

A defining feature of this literature is uncertain authorship. Much of it is pseudonymous (ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, to Solomon, to Moses or to other prestigious ancient names), or circulated anonymously, and the traditional attribution is frequently centuries out from the true date of composition. The Hermetic writings, once thought Egyptian and primordial, were shown by Isaac Casaubon to be of the early Christian era; many grimoires attributed to Solomon are late medieval or early modern.

The entries flag these attributions and give the scholarly dating where it is known. The texts group by tradition (Hermetic, alchemical, Solomonic, Kabbalistic, thelemic and the rest), so a reader can follow one current through its literature.