Occult Books

Non-Mythos works (generally real-world) are often mentioned side-by-side with fictional Mythos Tomes in work by Lovecraft and others.

Dæmonolatreia

Remigius' Dæmonolatreia (1693)

French judge Remigius (Nicolas Remy) wrote this essential work on witch-hunting, Dæmonolatreia, which was published in three books in Lugduni in 1595. Since there have been a German translation (1693) and an English one by Montague Summers under the name Daemonolatry (1930). Like the witch hunting works of Trithemius and Sprenger & Kramer (the infamous Malleus Maleficarum)*, the Daemonolatreia explains the horrors and dangers of the power of the witches, how to distinguish them, and how to torture and destroy them.

("The Festival" "The Dunwich Horror")

The Golden Bough

Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion or The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890)

A wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). It was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes. The work was aimed at a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855).

Frazer offered a modernist approach to discussing religion, treating it dispassionately[1] as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective. The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought was substantial.

("The Call of Cthulhu")

Picatrix

Picatrix, or The Aim of the Sage or The Goal of The Wise (10th-11th century)

Picatrix is the name used today, and historically in Christian Europe, for a 400-page book of occult magic and astrology originally written in Arabic under the title Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, which most scholars assume was originally written in the middle of the 11th century, though a supported argument for composition in the first half of the 10th century has been made. The Arabic title translates as The Aim of the Sage or The Goal of The Wise. The Arabic work was translated into Spanish and then into Latin during the 13th century, at which time it got the Latin title Picatrix. The book's title Picatrix is also sometimes used to refer to the book's author. A composite work that synthesizes older works on magic and astrology. The most influential interpretations suggests it is to be regarded as a handbook of talismanic magic and celestial magic.

Saducismus Triumphatus

Saducismus Triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions. In two parts. The first treating of their possibility. The second of their real existence. by Joseph Glanvill (1681)

The book affirmed the existence of witches with malign supernatural powers of magic, and attacked skepticism concerning their abilities. Glanvill likened these skeptics to the Sadducees, members of a Jewish sect from around the time of Jesus who were said to have denied the immortality of the soul. The book is also noted for the account of the Drummer of Tedworth, an early poltergeist story, and for one of the earliest descriptions of the use of a witch bottle, a countercharm against witchcraft. Strongly influenced Salem witch-hunter Cotton Mather.

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray (1921)

Describes the theory known as the witch-cult hypothesis, described in further detail in The God fo the Witches, which suggests that the things told about witches in Europe were in fact based on a real, ancient, existing, secret, pan-European pagan religion that worshiped a horned god, which was influential on the witchcraft revival of the 20th Century, introducing many of the ideas that would be incorporated into witchcraft as a modern religion. Murray suggested that the secrets of this religion were originally handed down by oral tradition among a hidden human race of "little people" who were constantly driven deeper into the wildernesses by the encroachment of civilization.

("The Horror at Red Hook", "The Call of Cthulhu")

The God of the Witches

The God of the Witches Margaret Murray (1931)

Continues describing the theory known as the witch-cult hypothesis first put forward in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, which suggests that the things told about witches in Europe were in fact based on a real, ancient, existing, secret, pan-European pagan religion that worshiped a horned god, which was influential on the witchcraft revival of the 20th Century, introducing many of the ideas that would be incorporated into witchcraft as a modern religion. Murray suggested that the secrets of this religion were originally handed down by oral tradition among a hidden human race of "little people" who were constantly driven deeper into the wildernesses by the encroachment of civilization.

Hermetic Corpus

Hermetic Corpus, or The Corpus Hermeticum

The term particularly applies to the Corpus Hermeticum, Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation in fourteen tracts, of which eight early printed editions appeared before 1500 and a further twenty-two by 1641. The Corpus Hermeticum are the core documents of the Hermetic tradition. Dating from early in the Christian era, they were mistakenly dated to a much earlier period by Church officials (and everyone else) up until the 15th century. Because of this, they were allowed to survive and we seen as an early precursor to what was to be Christianity. We know today that they were, in fact, from the early Christian era, and came out of the turbulent religious seas of Hellenic Egypt.

Turba Philosophorum

The Turba Philosophorum or Assembly of the Philosophers (900AD)

One of the oldest European alchemy texts considered to have been written c. 900 A.D., translated from the Arabic, attempting to put Greek alchemy into the Arabic language and to adapt it to Islamic science. Nine philosophers take part in a discussion, being, once the text has been transcribed back to the original Arabic, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, Leucippus, Ecphantus, Pythagoras and Xenophanes. The statements of the philosophers, whilst usually different from the known beliefs of the pre-Socratics, are usually recognisable as outgrowths of Greek philosophy. They discuss matter, how it acts, and relate this to cosmology, the gods, and the elements.

Liber Investigationis

Geber's Liber Investigationis, or 'Summa Perfectionis,' or 'Summit of Perfection' (1531)

The library of Joseph Curwen is said to have had a copy of 'Liber Investigationis' by Arabian scientist Geber (Jabir ibn-Hayyan). This is probably a Latinized version of the 'Summa Perfectionis,' or 'Summit of Perfection.' Geber's works provide a window into the Islamic Gnosticism of the late ninth century and shed light on classical Greek scientific texts, many of which do not survive in the original. Jābir’s alchemical works include descriptions of distillation, calcification, dissolution, crystallization, and other chemical operations that subsequently were used in the Islamic world and in Europe for centuries. Several works of the Jābirean corpus have been translated into Latin. The present work was written in three parts, covering the properties of metals, alchemical techniques, and the properties of the planets.

("The Case of Charles Dexter Ward")

Key of Wisdom

Artephius' The Key of Wisdom or Miftah al-Hikma or Clavis (Majoris) Sapientiae

This treatise describes the entire process of preparing the philosopher's stone. There are three separate operations described here: the preparation of the 'secret fire' (the catalyst or solvent which is used throughout the whole work, without which nothing can be achieved, but which is seldom if ever mentioned in any alchemical treatise), the preparation of a metallic vapor made from antimony and iron necessary in the preparation of the stone, and the preparation of the stone itself. These operations are not presented in sequence. The reader will note that the language is allusive and recondite, that several names are used to refer to the same thing and that one name is used to refer to several things. This is, however, an exceptionally clear alchemical text. Artephius is said to have written this in the 12th century. Numerous books over an incredible time span were attributed to Artephius; a Renaissance tradition held that Artephius had been born in the first or second century and died in the twelfth, thanks to having discovered the alchemical elixir that made it possible to prolong life. In his Secret Book, Artephius indeed claims to be more than a thousand years old.

("The Case of Charles Dexter Ward")

Zohar

Zohar (1558)

Large folio containing complete system of Kabbalistic theology. The Zohar (Hebrew, lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and "true self" to "The Light of God", and the relationship between the "universal energy" and man. The Zohar is mostly written in what has been described as an exalted, eccentric style of Aramaic.

("The Case of Charles Dexter Ward")

Albertus Magnus

TODO

Ars Magna et Ultima

TODO

Thesaurus Chemicus

TODO

Clavis Alchimiae

TODO

De Lapide Philosophico

TODO

Magnalia Christi Americana

TODO

Wonders of the Invisible World

TODO

Malleus Maleficarum

TODO

Simon Necronomicon

Necronomicon, or Simonomicon (1977)

This is one of the hoax Necronomicons produced in the 1970's and later as a mass-market paperback book, purporting to by the revelations of an anonymous "Simon" that Aleister Crowley and Lovecraft had somehow conspired to secretly create their individual works based on a hidden Sumerian magical text. The book seems to contain some form of ceremonial "Magick" inspired by a somewhat imaginative and silly jumble of vagely-researched Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, Crowley's teachings, in-name-only elements of Lovecraft's fiction filtered through the lens of August Derleth, and, no doubt, a healthy dose of "Simon"'s imagination.

(References might appear in Call of Cthulhu RPG scenarios for humorous effect as a shorthand for gullible amateur cultists, and in heavy metal music lyrics.)