Recommended Witch Books:

Tag: philosophy

Plato’s Complete Works

Complete Works

5 stars

Plato, ed. John M. Cooper & D. S. Hutchinson (Hackett, 1997)

Review:

You can learn more about magic and Witchcraft from a handful of Plato’s dialogues than you can from a warehouse-full of popular modern books. *Diuvei recommends in particular the Republic, the Symposium, Timaeus & Critias, Phaedo, and the Apology.

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Witchcraft Basics

Three Books of Occult Philosophy

Three Books Of Occult Philosophy

5 stars

Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (written 1509-10; tr. by James Freake, 1651; ed. by Donald Tyson, Llewellyn Publications, 2005)

Review:

Illustrated, archaic, authentic, essential: De Occulta Philosophia (Three Books of Occult Philosophy) is the most influential book on magic ever written. Agrippa was a Renaissance German knight, theologian, feminist philosopher, and defender of witches who wandered the courts of Europe learning about and advocating for magic as the true synthesis of religion and science. His celebrated and persecuted grimoire and textbook on magic was an inspiration for The Goodly Spellbook. Editor Tyson’s well-researched explanatory notes and illustrations more than make up for Freake’s awkward 17th-century translation from the original Latin, which unfortunately remains the only available version in English of all three volumes.

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Witchcraft Basics

Plato’s Republic

Republic

4 stars

Plato, translated by C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett, 2004)

Review:

A seminal tome by a Classical Pagan who argued that archetypal ideas govern matter and time, and explains magic’s philosophical bases.

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Witchcraft Basics

Alexandria: The Journal Of The Western Cosmological Traditions

Alexandria 1: The Journal of Western Cosmological Traditions

4 stars

Vol. 1, ed. David Fideler (1991 Phanes Press)

Alexandria 2: The Journal of Western Cosmological Traditions

4 stars

Vol. 2, ed. David Fideler (1994 Phanes Press)

Alexandria 3: The Journal of Western Cosmological Traditions

4 stars

Vol. 3, ed. David Fideler (1995 Phanes Press)

Alexandria 4: The Order & Beauty of Nature

4 stars

Vol. 4, ed. David Fideler (1997 Phanes Press)

Alexandria 5: Cosmology, Philosophy, Myth, & Culture

4 stars

Vol. 5, ed. David Fideler (2000 Phanes Press)

Review:

Explorations of Pagan topics such as the Life of Hypatia, an Orphic Hymn to Artemis, the Sacred Geography of the Ancient Greeks, The Science & Art of Animating Statues, and Pythagorean Harmonics, etc.; written by academic researchers and magical practitioners.

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Witchcraft Basics