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Primary Sources
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Trans. James Freake; ed. and annotated by Donald Tyson. Llewellyn, 1993. The work itself dates to Agrippa’s developing project from 1510, with the complete revised three-book edition appearing in 1533. Google Books
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991. Particularly important for Augustine’s encounter with the “books of the Platonists,” inward ascent, and his Christian appropriation of Platonic metaphysics. WorldCat
Ficino, Marsilio. Three Books on Life. Ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies/Renaissance Society of America, 1989. This is one of the most important primary texts for the astrology, medicine, music, planetary influence, and natural-magic portions of the episode. Google Books
Meister Eckhart. The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. Trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. Paulist Press, 1981. Google Books
Nicholas of Cusa. On Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia. Trans. Jasper Hopkins. 2nd ed. Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985. WorldCat
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems. Ed. and trans. Stephen A. Farmer. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998. This should be one of our major Pico sources rather than relying on summaries of the 900 Conclusions. WorldCat
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid, with Paul Rorem. Paulist Press, 1987. Includes The Divine Names, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and Mystical Theology. Cambridge University Press
Core Modern Scholarship
Faivre, Antoine. Access to Western Esotericism. State University of New York Press, 1994. Very useful for correspondence, living nature, imagination, mediation, transformation, Christian Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and defining Western esotericism without treating it as one secret continuous religion. JSTOR
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2008. An excellent broad academic overview covering Renaissance magic, Cabala, planetary and angel magic, and later Western esoteric developments. OUP Academic
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Important for keeping our larger historical thesis rigorous and avoiding the mythology of one uninterrupted underground occult tradition. Cambridge University Press
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Probably the best compact methodological source for explaining what scholars mean by “Western esotericism,” including magic, astrology, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Christian theosophy, and occultism. Bloomsbury
Magee, Glenn Alexander, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Especially useful for our argument that mysticism and esotericism overlap historically without being identical categories. Cambridge University Press
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. Originally 1958; Pennsylvania State University Press edition, 2000. Still a foundational scholarly study of Ficino and Renaissance magic, although we should supplement it with newer scholarship rather than treating a 1958 interpretation as the final word. Penn State University Press
Christian Platonism and Mysticism
McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism. Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Crossroad, 1991.
McGinn, Bernard. The Growth of Mysticism. Vol. 2 of The Presence of God. Crossroad, 1994.
McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism. Vol. 3 of The Presence of God. Crossroad, 1998.
Louth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Oxford University Press. Excellent for exactly the transition we are tracing from Platonism into Christian mystical theology.
Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Very useful for Dionysius, Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing, and apophatic theology.
Pseudo-Dionysius is especially central because current scholarship describes him explicitly as a Christian Neoplatonist who transposed late pagan Neoplatonism, particularly Proclus, into a distinctively Christian context. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Ficino, Pico, Christian Kabbalah and Renaissance Magic
Wirszubski, Chaim. Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism. Harvard University Press, 1989. Essential for Pico and the actual Jewish material behind his Christian Kabbalah.
Farmer, Stephen A. Syncretism in the West. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998. Useful both as a primary-text edition and a huge scholarly commentary on Pico.
Dan, Joseph, ed. The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters. Harvard College Library, 1997.
Copenhaver, Brian P. Studies on Renaissance magic, Ficino, Pico, and the philosophical context of natural magic. Copenhaver is one of the scholars I’d rely on whenever we need to distinguish Ficino’s natural/spiritual magic from sensationalized claims about Renaissance occultism.
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic. Particularly valuable for Ficino’s spiritus, music, astrology, and the theological problem of distinguishing natural/spiritual operations from demonic magic. Penn State University Press
The Pico material deserves extra source discipline because scholarship is very clear that Christianizing Kabbalah was one of Pico’s central projects, not merely an incidental interest; his 900 Conclusions contained 119 explicitly Kabbalistic theses, and he interpreted Kabbalah as supporting Christology and Trinitarian theology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Agrippa
Lehrich, Christopher I. The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy. Brill, 2003. Excellent for ritual, language, signs, sigils, Kabbalah, angels, demons, and Agrippa’s theory of occult communication. De Gruyter Brill
Nauert, Charles G. Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought. University of Illinois Press, 1965. Still useful for Agrippa’s intellectual and religious context.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s revised Agrippa entry is also particularly useful because it emphasizes that Agrippa’s project was a deliberate attempt to restore magic as a “sublime and sacred science,” divided across natural, celestial, and religious/ceremonial magic, while connecting magical practice ultimately to God and spiritual pur
Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.
