Thursday, September 13, 2018

The Occult Book

While doing some research for a paper I'm presenting to my SRICF College, I came across "The Occult Book: A Chronological Journey from Alchemy to Wicca" by John Michael Greer. John Michael Greer is a well-known author and blogger on occultism. He served for 12-years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America and, since 2013, he heads the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. The book's cover is aesthetically pleasing with blue with golden embossed text and symbols, but inside holds a plethora of information on occultism covering from the 6th Century BC to modern times. The book has the following chapters:
Pythagoras
Empedocles and the Four Elements
Horoscopes
Plato
Bacchic Mysteries
Miriam the Alchemist
Jesus Christ
Fall of Mona
Runic Alphabet
Apollonius of Tyana
Basilides of Alexandria
Magic
Valentinus
The Corpus Hermeticum
Plotinus
Zosimos of Panopolis
Iamblichus of Chalcis
Pagan Rome
Eleusinian Mysteries
Edicts of Justinian
Merlin
Jabir ibn Hayyan
Knights Templar
The Albigensian Crusades
The Kabbalah
Fall of Harran
Abraham Abulafia
Cecco d'Ascolithe 
Philosopher's Stone
Tarot
Witch Trials
Johannes Reuchlin
Paracelsus
Cornelius Agrippa
John Dee
Nostradamus
Isaac Luria
The Legend of Faust
Giordano Bureus
The Rosicrucian Manifestos
Christian Astrology
Freemasonry
Passage of the Witchcraft Act
Emanuel Swedenborg
The Hellfire Club
The Elus Coens
Franz Mesmer
Alessandro Cagliostro
Druids
Francis Barrett
Spiritualism
Eliphas Levi
Theosophy
The Martinist Order
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hoodoo
Carl Jung
Rudolf Steiner
The Thule Society
Manly P. Hall
Alchemy
Wicca
The Thirteenth Baktun
Each of these chapters contains a stunning picture relevant to the subject with a page's worth of description. This book does not go in-depth with each subject, but it lays a great foundation for researchers to start off from. At the bottom of each page, Greer gives more information to look up for further study. At the end of the book is a Notes and References Section which includes each date and subject, along with the books the material in this book came from. This book is good for both novices and experts in occultism as it provides the reader with a nice reference and chronological history.

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