Comparative
theologists are a syncretic bunch; that is, they try to see beyond the
trappings of spiritual phenomena and their responses to the root cause of the
issue. In effect, they try to see what unifies religious experience across all
cultures, rather than what divides them. They are on the one hand, very
humanist in their approach but with what (where they do subscribe to spiritual
urges) can only be described as agnostic aims: they want to believe but need to
pin down what there is to believe in.
The
library of a comparative theologist NPC will contain a wide variety of
fundamental religious texts along with their commentaries and concordances – it
will surprise no-one to see La Vey’s Satanic Bible sitting alongside The New
Testament on their bookshelf. Other works will be of a philosophical,
theological or psychological nature, with a sprinkling of anthropological and
ethnological material thrown in.
Religious Texts (Roll 1D6, then 1D12)*
|
|||
1-3
|
4-6
|
||
1
|
The Book of Mormon (1830)
|
1
|
Aradia (1899)
|
2
|
The Gnostic Gospels (1945)
|
2
|
Bardo Thodol (c.1300 CE)
|
3
|
Mahayana Sutras (186 CE)
|
3
|
Tripitaka (500 BCE)
|
4
|
Torah (400 BCE)
|
4
|
Talmud (200-500 CE)
|
5
|
The Qu’ran (609-632 CE)
|
5
|
The Vedas (1,500-1,000 BCE)
|
6
|
Bible Concordance
|
6
|
Bible - Greek
|
7
|
Bible – King James Version (KJV) (1611)
|
7
|
Bible – New International Version (NIV) (1973-1978)
|
8
|
The Bhagavad Ghita (c.400 BCE)
|
8
|
Philosophy
|
9
|
Guru Granth Sahib (1704)
|
9
|
The Kojiki (711-712 CE)
|
10
|
I Ching (1,000 – 750 BCE)
|
10
|
Analects of Confucius (475 BCE – 220 CE)
|
11
|
The Heavenly Doctrine (from 1749)
|
11
|
The Secret Doctrine (1888)
|
12
|
The Satanic Bible (1969)
|
12
|
The Urantia Book (1924-1955)
|
*If the result falls
outside of the time period for your narrative, use the result in the opposite
column, or re-roll.
Results:
The
Book of Mormon:
The Book of Mormon: An
Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of
Nephi, to give it its
full title, is the holy text of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon faith. The text was given to the
religion’s founder – Joseph Smith, Jr. – after four years of tutelage by the
Angel Moroni, in the form of a set of golden plates bound together by gold
wire. According to Smith, the Book
was originally written in “reformed Egyptian” and he was blessed with the
ability to translate this language by his angel guide. The translation and
publication of the work was a torrid affair but it was accomplished by 1830 and
talks about lost Tribes of Israel walking the North American mainland in the
time of Christ. The original golden plates were returned to their angelic
guardian upon completion.
Aradia:
American
folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland spent some time in Italy at the end of the 1800s
and worked to make contact with a local group of practising witches. Their
leader, a woman whom he referred to as “Maddalena”, was his main source of
information and, after working with him for 11 years, she gave him a copy of a
manuscript called the Vangelo, or
“Gospel”. It contains 15 chapters, outlining the nature of her faith and its
origins back to an ancient cult dedicated to Aradia, the daughter of the goddess
Diana, who was sent to Earth to teach witchcraft to the peasants so that they
could oppose their oppressors. Leland took two years to edit the book and
published it using the title “Aradia” in 1899. It attracted no great attention
until the 1950s when ideas that European folk religions might all have derived
from a single ancient religious tradition began to gain currency. The book has
had vast impact in the creation of modern notions of Wicca across the planet,
although academia is still divided as to whether Leland was a faithful conduit
of secret knowledge, or whether he made the whole thing up.
The
Gnostic Gospels:
Discovered
in the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945, the Gnostic Gospels are a
series of 13 leather-bound codices which were sealed inside a clay jar and
buried. Also known as the “Nag Hammadi
Library” and the “Chenoboskion
Manuscripts”, the works created a seismic wave of interest across the
Christian, Islamic and Hebrew communities, and the anticipation of what they
might have contained, caused much anxiety within religious communities. Some of
the material was mostly of no great interest – some excerpts from the Corpus Hermeticum, for example and parts
of Plato’s Republic – but other books
were treatises of a Gnostic bent, which threw light on many unconsidered
aspects of the life of Jesus Christ. Textual echoes from known Bible sources
proved the authenticity of the texts and a tentative composition date of around
80 AD has been proposed, while the books themselves date to the 3rd or 4th
Century AD. The best known book from this collection is the Gospel of Thomas, but improved
restoration techniques have also discovered the Gospels of Mary and of Judas from within the damaged pages. The
books would seem to have been buried in response to a decree by Saint
Athanasius in 367 AD, banning the use of non-canonical texts in religious
discussions. Today they are housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
(These days, with the Internet and everybody feeling as though their personal opinion is unshakeable fact, there is a groundswell movement attempting to claim that the Gospels are, in fact, a hoax. When someone out there in the world says 'white' it seems there's an endless stream of entitled know-nothings who have to shout 'black' in order to make themselves feel important. I'm looking at you Flat-Earthers...)
(These days, with the Internet and everybody feeling as though their personal opinion is unshakeable fact, there is a groundswell movement attempting to claim that the Gospels are, in fact, a hoax. When someone out there in the world says 'white' it seems there's an endless stream of entitled know-nothings who have to shout 'black' in order to make themselves feel important. I'm looking at you Flat-Earthers...)
Bardo
Thodol (“The Tibetan Book of the Dead”):
“The
Bardo Thödol began by
being a 'closed' book, and so it has remained, no matter what kind of
commentaries may be written upon it. For it is a book that will only open
itself to spiritual understanding, and this is a capacity which no man is born
with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special
experience. It is good that such, to all intents and purposes, 'useless' books
exist. They are meant for those 'queer folk' who no longer set much store by
the uses, aims, and meaning of present-day 'civilisation'.”
—Carl
Jung, from the Introduction to Evan-Wentz’ translation
This
is an exoteric textbook for ensuring the safety and positive reincarnation of
dead souls. The work describes the process of entering the afterlife, the
encounters that a dead soul will experience and the means to obtain a
beneficial existence after reincarnation. Specific chants and incantations are
designed to ward off monsters and other hazards which could prevent the soul
from reincarnating; exercises prepare the reader for the experience, shortly
after death, and ready them for these encounters. To Western readers the work is
dense and largely incredible, much like being given instruction for operating
the tools in the ‘workshop of the afterlife’.
Mahayana
Sutras:
These
are the collected teachings of Siddharta Gautama (c.563/480 – c.483/400 BCE)
known as the Buddha. It is a canonical work of that major stream of Buddhism
known as Mahayana Buddhism as well as the Tibetan version of the faith.
Originally transmitted orally after his death, the sutras which comprise the
collection were codified at a later stage and their final form preserved.
Tripitaka:
The
“Three Baskets” were composed around 500 BCE and then committed to print around
the 1st Century BCE, when fears of it being lost due to famine and wars became
pre-eminent. It consists of three sections – the Vinaya Pitaka, or basket of expected discipline for monks; the Sutra Pitaka or basket of discourse; and
the Abhidhama Pitaka or basket of
special doctrine. As can be expected, every Buddhist monastery has a copy of
this work and, in Theravada Buddhist sects it is referred to as the Pali Canon.
The Torah:
The
Torah is the name given by those of
the Jewish faith to the first five books of the Old Testament (which Christians
call the Pentateuch) and which are
traditionally the words passed on to Moses directly from God. The complete
Jewish “bible” consists of 24 books and is called the Tanakh. This excerpted body of literature is also important to the
Islamic believers, although considered of lesser importance than the Qu’ran. Some copies of the Torah contain commentaries along with the
basic text and a majority of these works are printed on scrolls rather than in
book form, especially when used within synagogues.
The Talmud:
The
Talmud consists of two parts – the Mishnah (c.200 CE) and the Gemara (c.500 CE), although sometimes
only the Gemara – and is most often
encountered written in Hebrew. It is a compendium of rabbinic theology and the
foundation of Jewish religious law. It covers a wide range of subjects, from
history to ethics, and is considered to be the cornerstone of Jewish thought.
The Qu’ran:
The
Qu’ran is the written revelation
from God transmitted through the Archangel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic) to Mohammed, beginning in his 40th year on 22
December 609 CE and continuing through to 632 CE. For some time this
information was only disseminated orally but it was eventually written down.
The text pre-supposes knowledge of the Semitic Bible and much historical
information between the two works is shared, although occasionally the Qu’ran supplants or replaces these
events. Some versions contain, or are accompanied by, another work called the Hadith, which are commentaries on the
source material; Qu’ranist Moslems however, eschew all other texts.
The Vedas:
The
Vedas are a large body of religious
and other texts which comprise the earliest known Hindu writings. While the
Hindu epic the Mahabharata credits
the creator-god Brahma with these texts, internal evidence within the writings
states that the work was created and compiled by a series of enlightened sages.
However it was written, Hindus consider it to be an inspired body of
literature, originating directly from the divine, and essentially authorless. The
work consists of four sections – the Rigveda,
the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda. An excerpted part of the whole which is sometimes
encountered separately is the Upanishads,
a philosophical work on meditation and spiritual knowledge.
Bible
Concordance:
These
works provide thematic breakdowns to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible,
allowing readers to quickly access relevant parts of the texts. They usually also
provide some textual analyses of the material including mentions of sources and
translations.
Bible
– Greek:
The
Christian Bible mainly derives from sources written in Classical Greek and many
Bible students choose to examine the original forms of the texts where these
are useful for their investigations.
Bible
– KJV:
King
James I of England sought to provide translations of the Holy Bible in his own
language and hired a group of translators to embark upon the work. The result
is the somewhat florid King James Bible which has become a standard Biblical
text, despite some errors of sense and a certain obsession with witchcraft (of
which, King James was quite terrified).
Bible
– NIV:
One
of the most popular and accessible versions of the Holy Bible (also available
in Spanish and Portuguese), the New International Version was begun in the
early 1970s, with the New Testament being released in 1973 and the Old
Testament published in 1978 (re-packaged along with the New Testament).
The Bhagavad Gita:
The
“Song of God” is an excerpted section of the Mahabharata, which tells of the Prince Arjuna travelling to a war
in a chariot being driven by the deity Krishna. Arjuna bemoans the forthcoming
battle and worries about its effect upon his soul, to which Krishna responds in
a narrative that discusses duty, the nature of the soul and the concept of moksha (breaking free of the wheel of karma) among many other topics. It is
the single most-read and influential text of the Hindu faith.
Philosophy:
Any
library designed along this theme must contain a range of general philosophical
treatises to provide back-up. Chief among these is a copy of Plato’s Republic but there should also be copies
of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
Descartes’ Meditations and Principles, the works of Wittgenstein
and Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death,
amongst others.
Guru
Granth Sahib
The
holy text of the Sikhs. The book was written by the last living leader of the
faith who committed the writings of himself and the ten previous leaders into
this single body of work: it was intended that the book replace the idea of a
religious leader and, as such, is considered a “living being” in and of itself.
It was written in 1604 and revised with some additions one hundred years later.
It speaks of a society free from oppression, governed by divine justice.
The Kojiki
The
Kojiki , or “Records of Ancient
Matters”, is a holy Shinto text written by O no Yasumaro at the behest of
Empress Genmei in the period 711-712 AD. It is a collection of legends,
genealogies, songs and other earlier writings which codify the history of Japan
and connects the rulers and great clans of the country to heavenly creator
beings.
I
Ching:
The
I Ching, or “Book of Changes”, is one
of the five noble books of Confucian thought. Legend has it that the Yellow
Emperor derived the I Ching from
observing the markings - which he 'translated' into six-line hexagrams - on the shell of a turtle while he was bathing in a
river. The combinations of broken and unbroken lines led him to write 64
prophecies based on the interpretations of these sequences. Each series of
lines (or hexagram) is composed of six stacked horizontal bars comprising yang
lines (unbroken) or yin lines (broken), with a gap in the centre. These
hexagrams fall into two different camps: either ‘fixed’ or ‘moving’, according
to the interpretation. Contemplation of these 64 verses is said to aid in the
process of attaining enlightenment and to allow the philosopher to better
evaluate the world and his place within it. The writing is dense and abstruse,
with a multiplicity of interpretations.
In
one of his rare scholarly moments, Aleister Crowley translated the I Ching into English, complete with
annotations designed to make the work relevant to his Thelemite theories of
‘magick’. Unlike many of his other translations, it fortunately does not attempt
to ‘improve’ upon the original text.
The
Analects of Confucius:
Both
Taoism and Confucianism take as their foundation the Five Classics of Chinese literature; however, this work – a series
of commentaries upon the Classics by
Confucius and his contemporaries, begun during the Warring States period (475-221
BCE) and finalised in the middle of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) – has
largely superseded those other works. It has been regarded as the most
culturally influential religious text in China right up to the present day.
The
Heavenly Doctrine:
This
is a collected series of works written by Emmanuel Swedenborg during his
lifetime. It outlines his view of a reformed Christian church, and was written
as a product of divine inspiration with, as he says, Jesus and other heavenly
figures dictating the texts directly to him. In total they comprise the holy
texts of the flavour of Lutheran Christianity referred to (somewhat
inelegantly) as “Swedenborgianism”. Specific titles of interest include Heaven and Hell, The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine and True Christian Religion.
The Secret Doctrine:
The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy to give its full title, is the 1888 magnum opus by Helene Petrovna Blavatsky
outlining her theories of religion which would give rise to the cult of
Theosophy. It is, in fact, the plagiarised and cobbled-together, bloated
waffling of a deranged mind and hardly worth getting excited about. H.P.
Lovecraft used the introductory volume – The
Stanzas of Dzyan – as a Mythos tome, The
Book of Dzyan, and argued that his version was the misremembered original
of Blavatsky’s knock-off.
The
Satanic Bible:
Written
by Anton Szandor LaVey in 1969, this is a collection of rituals and
philosophical essays compiled to espouse the particular style of Satanism that
LaVey was crafting. It provides an anodyne contrast to Crowley-tainted thinking
and has greatly influenced modern Satanist thought. Like most books of this
kind, it strives to be confronting and to excite opposition, which somewhat
obscures its otherwise unremarkable philosophical issues.
The
Urantia Book:
Also
known as The Urantia Papers or The Fifth Epochal Revelation, this work
appeared out of Chicago between the years 1924 and 1955. It tries to blend
together a theology equal parts religious, philosophical and scientific, and is
unusual for a religious text claiming a divine origin in that it contains an
enormous amount of discussion on scientific matters. It discusses the origins
and meaning of life on this planet (“Urantia”); the role of humans in the
universe; humanity’s relationship with God; and the life of Jesus. The authors
are referred to as celestial beings communicating to the transcribers via a medium and the work was
compiled and edited by Chicago doctor, William S. Sadler and his wife, Lena. A tax-exempt
educational institution for dissemination of the Book was created in 1955 and
it was released in October of that year.
In
1991, a woman published an online Concordance of The Urantia Book and sold CD-ROM versions of the text itself; she
was sued by the Urantia Foundation and was initially found not guilty; an
appeal overturned this ruling. Later, a print publication on the life of Jesus
Christ was found to have lifted whole swathes of the text into its pages – this
time, the Urantia Foundation lost their case outright: it was determined that
the descendants of the original medium were the only ones who had the right to
reinstate copyright over the Book
after it had lapsed in 1983; since they did not, the Book was deemed to exist in the public domain.
*****
Apart
from religious tracts and philosophical glosses, the library of a comparative
theologian will contain many other works on aspects of religion or
philosophical works to do with the nature of the religious experience and its
expression in human society. Within this range, there are some bona fide Mythos
Texts which might be of value to Investigators. Roll on the following table:
Texts of Comparative Theology – Roll
1D6 then 1D12*
|
|||
1-3
|
4-6
|
||
1
|
Die Unausspreclichen Kulten (1839)
|
1
|
Magyar Folklore (1800s)
|
2
|
De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum…
|
2
|
Pert Em Hru
|
3
|
The Zohar
|
3
|
A Discourse on Witchcraft… (1735)
|
4
|
The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921)
|
4
|
The Occult Sciences
|
5
|
Mythologiques (1964-1971)
|
5
|
The Sacred & the Profane (1957)
|
6
|
The Golden Bough (1890)
|
6
|
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
|
7
|
E.A.
Wallis-Budge (1857-1934)
|
7
|
Carl
Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
|
8
|
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
|
8
|
Bronislaw
Malinowski (1884-1942)
|
9
|
Notes toward a Bibliography of World
Occultism (1927)
|
9
|
Mysticism (1914)
|
10
|
Malleus Maleficarum (1487)
|
10
|
Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)
|
11
|
Jackson
Elias (1887-1925)
|
11
|
Chariots of the Gods? (1968)
|
12
|
Remnants of Lost Empires (1809)
|
12
|
On Ancient Civilisations (1910)
|
*If the result falls
outside of the time period for your narrative, use the result in the opposite
column, or re-roll.
Results:
Die
Unausspreclichen Kulten - Freidrich Wilheim von Junzt:
“I
happened to spy the title that day and bought the book for a ridiculously small
sum. Certainly small compared to the price I’ve paid for reading it.”
-“Dope
War of the Black Tong”, Robert M. Price
Friedrich
Wilheim von Junzt wrote the manuscript of this work and left it with his
friend, Gottfried Mülder the Düsseldorf publisher, before embarking upon a
journey through Asia. He returned from an exploration in Mongolia only to lock
himself in his study and begin writing another book: he was found strangled six
months later inside the locked room with the manuscript torn and scattered
about him. Von Junzt’s friend Alexis Ladeau worked to piece the document back
together: once finished, he read it, burnt it and slashed his own throat with a
straight razor. The contents of this second work are unknown although several
pages were rumoured to have been buried with Ladeau. It was left to Mülder to
publish the original manuscript in a limited edition, which he did in 1839 with
illustrations by the troubled artist Gunther Hasse.
The
circumstances surrounding the printing of the work and speculation as to what
the supposed sequel may have contained, proved much too dark for the taste of
its readers and many who bought the book burnt it after learning of the
author’s fate. That might have been the end of the book but for the fact that a
Jesuit priest, Pierre Sansrire, translated a copy into French and had it
published in St. Malo, in 1843. Again, a short run edition, no known copies of
this version have survived; however, it is known that unscrupulous bookseller,
M. A. G. Bridewell, bought a copy in a London bookstore and found it so
scandalous that he had it disbound, translated into English and published under his own
imprint. This quarto volume was re-titled Nameless
Cults and was released in 1845. It was a poorly presented production, riddled
with mistakes and errors and marred by the presence of lurid woodcut
illustrations with little relevance to the text.
In
1909, the Golden Goblin Press of New York issued a translation from the German
original complete with full-colour plates redrawn from the Hasse originals by
Diego Vasquez. Unfortunately the editors saw fit to expurgate fully one quarter
of the text and the final result was so expensive as to render it largely
inaccessible to the general public. In the same year, the Starry Wisdom Press
is said to have released its own translation but copies have never been
located. The Miskatonic University Press has often come forward with plans to
reissue the work in a scholarly edition complete with annotations and
accompanying essays but the heirs of the von Junzt estate have repeatedly
refused to give permission for another printing.
The
text deals with the traditions of cult patterns around the world and touches
upon such well-known phenomena as the Thugs and the African Leopard and Lion Cults. A
weighty central section prefaced by an essay entitled “Narrative of the Elder World”, deals with the worldwide Cthulhu
Cult, the Tcho-tcho peoples and their diaspora,
the cults of Leng and Ghatanathoa and the People of the Black Stone. In places
von Junzt’s masterful, precise prose breaks down and he dwells ramblingly upon
seemingly meaningless tangents such as the uses of unicorn horns and his
supposed sojourn in Hell; the faithful reader will not let such meanderings
distract them from the multitude of other useful insights to be found.
Magyar
Folklore:
An
obscure tome of folklore collected by an author named Dornly, of whom little
else is known. It was produced as a limited edition work with no publication
date. It contains a chapter entitled “Dream
Myths” which discusses a certain Black Stone near the town of Stregoicavar
in Hungary.
“De
Mysteriis Aegyptiorum Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum. Proclus In Platonicum Alcibiadem
De Anima, Atque Daemone: Idem De Sacrificio & Magia. Porphyrius De Divinis
Atque; Daemonibus Psellus De Daemonibus. Mercurii Trismegisti Pimander: Ejusdem
Asclepius”:
Also
known as the Theurgia, “De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum...” (“On the
Mysteries of the Egyptians...”) is attributed to the Neoplatonic scholar
Iamblichus Chalcidensis, who studied under Porphyry. The two disagreed over the
practice of theurgy, that is, the importance of rituals in order to ensure the
operation of higher beings – or gods – in human affairs. The two parted over
their respective views and many of Iamblichus’s responses to his master’s
criticisms are contained with the Mysteries.
However,
stylistic differences between this work and Iamblichus’ other writings have
shed the light of suspicion over the authorship of the Mysteries. Despite this question, whoever wrote it must have studied
under Iamblichus and attended his school. The work traces the emergence of cult
ritual practice in a polytheistic world, noting parallels in worship and
rationalising them in a Neoplatonic framework.
Pert
Em Hru:
Literally,
“The Book of Going Forth by Day”,
this work was a standard issue of information and spells designed to be buried
with the dead of Ancient Egypt so as to prepare them for the ordeals that would
follow once they had entered the Afterlife. It was translated in English as “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”. As part
of the preparations for burial, an Ancient Egyptian would have a copy of this
scroll prepared for them, with their own name and other personal details filled
in to the relevant spaces so that it would be pertinent to their particular
situation. Wallis Budge’s “Scroll of Ani”
is simply one of these personalised forms of the document; however, it was
considered at the time a unique work and published at such.
The Zohar:
“...from
the fourteenth century [the Zohar]
held almost unbroken sway over the minds of the majority of the Jews. In it the
Talmudic legends concerning the existence and activity of the shedhim (demons) are repeated and amplified, and a
hierarchy of demons was established corresponding to the heavenly
hierarchy...Even the scholarly and learned Rabbis of the seventeenth century
clung to the belief.”
-M.
Gaster, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
Devised
as a mystical interpretation of the Torah,
known in Christianity as the Pentateuch
or the five Books of Moses from the Bible,
The Zohar is the foundation work of
the Jewish mystical system called the Kabbalah.
Like the Rabbinic commentary on the Torah
called the Midrash, it offers
scriptural interpretations as well as material on theosophic theology, mystical
cosmogony and mystical psychology. It outlines the nature of God, the origin
and formation of the universe, the substance of the soul, the path to
redemption and the complex relationship between the “universal energy” and
humanity.
The
Zohar (lit. “Splendour”, or “Radiance”)
first appeared in Spain in the 13th Century. It was published by a Jewish
writer named Moses de Leon, who ascribed its authorship to one Shimon bar
Yochai, a rabbi of the 2nd Century AD who hid from Roman persecution in a cave
for 13 years and who was inspired to write the work by the Prophet Elijah.
According to Jewish legend, the Kabbalah
was an oral tradition revealed by God to Biblical figures such as Abraham and
Moses and which was then passed on by word of mouth until Shimon bar Yochai
chose to write it down. However, textual analysis has demonstrated that Moses
de Leon is the most likely author of this work: the Zohar is mostly written in an exalted and eccentric style of
Aramaic which, while not impossible, would be an unusual format for a writer of
the 1st Century AD. Today, non-Orthodox Judaism holds the Zohar to be apocryphal and outside mainstream Judaism; Orthodox
Jews hold the work to be canonical.
“A
Discourse On Witchcraft: Occasioned By A Bill Now Depending In Parliament, To
Repeal The Statute Made In The First Year Of The Reign Of King James I,
Intituled, An Act Against Conjuration, Witchcrafts And Dealing With Evil And
Wicked Spirits”:
From
the reign of King Henry VIII, England passed several Acts relating to the
practice of Witchcraft and outlining punishment for those found guilty of the
crime. The initial Act was particularly punitive, requiring the death of the
guilty person after a trial in the clerical courts and the forfeiture of all
their possessions to the Crown. Later Acts softened the official stance until
this final one, passed in 1735, which reduced the crime from a supernatural
effect to an act of fraud against the gullible. It remained in force in England
and its colonial territories until repealed in the late Twentieth Century.
The
Witch Cult in Western Europe – Margaret Murray:
Published
at the height of the success of Frazer’s Golden
Bough, Margaret Murray’s thesis was that all of the things which are
discussed about witches in Europe across the ages stem from the idea of a
wide-spanning and now debased religious cult, which worshipped a horned god and
which was driven out by successive religious cultures, most notably the
Christian faith. Her theory was widely celebrated at the time of its
publication (1921) but detractors feel that her claims go too far – they
acknowledge the possibility of a widespread ‘pagan tradition’ across Europe
with regional fluctuations, but feel that it lacked the coherence of an
organised faith. In modern times, feminist writers and followers of modern
Wiccan movements have championed Murray’s work once more.
The
Occult Sciences - A Compendium Of Transcendental Doctrine And Experiment,
Embracing An Account Of Magical Practices; Of Secret Sciences In Connection
With Magic; Of The Professors Of Magical Arts; And Of Modern Spiritualism,
Mesmerism, And Theosophy:
"The
subject of occultism has been very fully dealt with during recent years by
various students of eminence. It has remained for the results of their studies
to be condensed into a portable volume, which shall conduct the inquirer into
the vestibule of each branch of 'the occult sciences,' and place within his
reach the proper means of prosecuting his researches further in any desired
direction."
-A.E.
Waite
An
important catalogue, this encyclopaedic work was first published in London by
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co. Ltd., in 1891 and then again in 1923. Within
its pages, Arthur Edmund Waite catalogues and discusses a myriad magical
philosophies and practises both high and low, good and evil, including
overviews of such organisations as the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and the
Theosophists.
Mythologiques
– Claude Levi Strauss:
This
is a four-volume work of cultural anthropology begun in 1964 and concluded in
1971. The first volume - The Raw and the
Cooked – examines many Amerindian societies and looks at how much of their
spiritual viewpoints are defined by diametrically opposing states of being. The
remaining three volumes are From Honey to
Ashes (1966); The Origin of Table
Manners (1968); and The Naked Man
(1971).
The
Sacred & the Profane – Mircea Eliade:
In
his best-known work, French philosopher Mircea Eliade traces manifestations of
the sacred from primitive to modern times, in terms of space, time, nature, and
the cosmos, and life itself. Eliade shows how the total human experience of the
religious man compares to that of the non-religious and observes that even
moderns who proclaim themselves to live in a completely profane world are still
unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred, in camouflaged myths and
degenerated rituals.
The
Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion –
Sir James Frazer:
“No
sooner had I read this great work than I became immersed in it and enslaved by
it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a
great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact
studies and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology.”
-Bronislaw
Malinowski
Renamed
“The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and
Religion” in its second edition, Frazer attempts to correlate aspects of
mythical and magical practise across time and space by exploring
cross-cultural similarities, in an attempt to trace the religious impulse back
to its source. He theorizes that human religious and scientific thought stems
from ancient fertility cults which featured the veneration and periodic
sacrifice of a sacred king figure; he argues that humanity has moved from these
magical roots, through to religious expression, and on to scientific thought.
The first edition in 1890 comprised two volumes; the second edition in 1900
expanded to three, while the third edition – which was released between 1906
and 1915 – was published in twelve volumes.
The
Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell:
This
is a work on comparative mythology, first published in 1949, in which Campbell
traces the similarities to be found in the concept of the ‘Journey of the Hero’
in legends across the world. It has become a highly influential work across
many intellectual and creative platforms and its publication is now controlled
by a Foundation which was established for the dissemination of Campbell’s
ideas. In 2011, it was listed on “Time
Magazine’s” 100 most influential books written in English since the time of
the magazine’s inception in 1923.
E.A. Wallis-Budge:
Wallis
Budge is pretty much the father of Egyptology when it comes to the English
language. Largely self-taught, he was taken on as an assistant in the Eastern
Antiquities section of the British Museum as a youth and put to work
classifying the inventory. He taught himself cuneiform and smatterings of many
other Levantine ancient scripts including Egyptian Hieroglyphs. He produced
many fundamental texts concerning Egyptian Archaeology and, while most of the material
contained within them has been revised, discarded or amended, his books still
attract a fair degree of interest, if only in the antiquarian book trade.
While
considered an important leader in his field, Wallis Budge was also something of
a prankster and thus often undercut his credibility. He started a rumour that a
“cursed” Egyptian mummy was aboard the RMS
Titanic – citing acquisition documents from the British Museum collection -
and implied that it was responsible for the ship’s sinking. Later investigators,
tracing the museum details, discovered the artefact still within the
collection. His best known works are as follows:
1-2: The Egyptian Heaven &
Hell – Outlines the cosmological worldview of the Ancient Egyptians,
discussing their notions of the Afterlife;
3-4:
Egyptian Magic – Discusses the notion of magic in the
Ancient Egyptian culture as revealed through translated papyri and other
hieroglyphic markings;
5:
The Mummy – A detailed overview of the mummification
process with a thorough investigation of why the ancient Egyptians conducted
this practise and what it was supposed to achieve;
6: The Scroll of Ani –
A translation of The Egyptian Book of the
Dead as retrieved from the tomb of a scribe named Ani. This was a very
expensive and difficult to obtain work in its first edition.
Carl Gustav Jung:
Jung
is the creator of analytical psychology and his work has had massive influence
in the areas of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy
and religious studies. Among other formative concepts he discussed the notion
of ‘individuation’, or the process whereby an individual creates itself out of
its personal consciousness. He also wrote important tracts on synchronicity and
the collective unconscious and established the idea of archetypes. Freud saw in
Jung the possibility of someone to whom he could pass on his mantle as the
world’s foremost psychologist; however, deep and insurmountable differences
between them and their individual approaches put them at either side of a
schism which remains today. As an artist and writer as well as a psychologist,
much of Jung’s work was not published in his lifetime and, indeed, still more
of it is waiting to be committed to print. The most pertinent titles are listed
below:
1:
Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)
2:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)
3-4:
Psychology and Religion (1938)
5:
Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology
of the Self (1951)
6:
Symbols of Transformation (revised
edition of Psychology of the Unconscious)
(1952)
7:
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting
Principle (1952)
8: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)
The
Varieties of Religious Experience - William James:
Written
by William James, the so-called “Father of American Psychology” and brother of
the writer Henry James, this work is the collected series of lectures presented
by James on the nature of religious phenomena. It covers all aspects of the
‘religious experience’ - from supernatural events to sainthood – and
establishes a framework whereby these events can be discussed and posits the
causes of their manifestations.
Bronislaw Malinowski:
Malinowski
is revered as the “Father of Social Anthropology” for his work to demonstrate
that cultural exchanges serve to fulfill basic human needs. While studying in
London he was given an opportunity to travel to New Guinea to do fieldwork
there. En route, World War I broke out and he was forced to remain in
Australia, where opportunities were provided to him to undertake ethnographic
work in their territories. He chose to travel to the Trobriand Islands in
Melanesia where he remained until after the War. Later he went to America to
work and again, the outbreak of a World War forced him to remain until the conflict
was resolved. His approach to field work radically altered the nature of social
anthropology and his techniques have been successfully implemented across the
board. His best known works include:
1-3:
Myth in Primitive Psychology (1926);
and
4-6: Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1948)
Notes
toward a Bibliography of World Occultism, Mysticism and Magic – Henry Armitage:
Published
by the Miskatonic University Press in 1927, this is the groundwork established
by Armitage from which to develop a wide-ranging theory of the practise and
nature of the occult universe. It stems from personal observations and
fieldwork and comes quite close to challenging many accepted theories: readers
often complain that Armitage tends to “play it safe” rather than to commit.
Mysticism
– Annie Besant:
One
of the champions and mainstays of Theosophy in its later stages, Annie Besant
wrote many groundbreaking books on spirituality and the religious experience –
this is probably her best known work. In its pages she establishes a framework
for recognising mysticism and discusses the history and impact of the mystic
impulse across the ages; she also talks about the relevance of mysticism in the
modern world.
Malleus
Maleficarum:
“Curiously,
as soon as I opened the books, I had an uncanny conviction that I knew their
contents. Yet I had never seen them before, nor, to the best of my knowledge,
had I ever encountered such titles as Malleus Maleficarum and the Daemonialitas of Sinistrari. They dealt with witch-lore and wizardry,
with all manner of spells and legends, with the destruction of witches and
warlocks by fire...”
-August
Derleth, “The Peabody Inheritance”
The
Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of
Witches”) is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft. It was
written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name
Henricus Institoris) and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1487.
Kramer wrote the Malleus following
his expulsion from Innsbruck by the local bishop, after charges of illegal
behaviour were laid against him, stemming from his obsession with the sexual
habits of one of the accused in a trial - Helena Scheuberin - which led the
other tribunal members to suspend proceedings. In 1519, Jacob Sprenger’s name
was added as a second author, 33 years after the book’s publication and 24
years after Sprenger’s death. The work espouses extermination of witches,
developing a detailed legal and theological theory on the issue, backed up by a
reproduced Papal Bull and the facsimile signatures of the senior staff of the
University of Cologne. It was a bestseller and second only in terms of sales to
the Bible for almost 200 years.
The
Malleus elevates sorcery to the
criminal status of heresy and prescribes inquisitorial practices for secular
courts in order to wipe out witchcraft. The recommended procedures include
torture to effectively obtain confessions and the death penalty as the only
sure remedy against the evils of witchcraft. Burning alive at the stake was
seen at the time as the appropriate punishment for heretics and the Malleus encourages the same treatment
for witches.
It
was later used by royal courts during the Renaissance, and from then on
contributed to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft throughout
Europe during the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Comparative
theologists would not have this book as a means to unearthing witches in
society; rather, they would likely refer to it as the expression of a type of
religious mania.
Wonders
of the Invisible World – Cotton Mathers:
“The
essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious
Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape
of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the
essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal
Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his
Bodie has been incinerated.”
-Cotton
Mathers, Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702.
Cotton
Mather lived at the time of the Salem Witch Trials and had a huge impact on
those deplorable events. He was pastor at Boston’s North Church and had some
very strong and very peculiar ideas about America and the things which lived
there: specifically, he felt it was a land infested with “devils”, all of which
were trying to tear the Puritan bulkhead that he and his folk were trying to
establish. Although he was not a witness to the events that happened in Salem,
he was instrumental in causing the hallucinations and visions of those involved
to be taken on board by the court as “evidence”. An earlier book which he had
written - Memorable Providences Relating
to Witchcraft and Possessions – revealed his views that America had been
the undisturbed realm of Satan prior to the puritan’s landing and fanned the
flames of the witch-hunting frenzy that culminated in the Salem debacle.
Wonders of the Invisible
World – written in 1693
- discusses the Salem trials and many other cases of witchcraft and possession
which Mathers took a direct hand in prosecuting. It discusses the means of
freeing one’s self from the powers of the Devil (mainly through prayer and
fasting) and the means of determining if an ecstatic vision derives from God or
from Hell. It sifts through the evidence presented at the Salem trials and
vigorously defends the verdicts reached at those hearings. Ironically, in the
aftermath of the trials, those involved deeply regretted their actions, and
felt that Mathers’ interference was a direct catalyst in the matter getting out
of hand. In fact, a later book was published – More Wonders of the Invisible World – which critically discusses
the hysterical meddling of Mathers and other notable figures of the colony
during the events.
Mathers
survived the backlash and went on to further his career as a religious leader
in Massachusetts. He died and in 1728 and was buried in Copps Hill Burial
Ground in Boston. Given the ghoulish activity Lovecraft identified as taking
place in that locale, it’s probably not worth anyone’s time going to visit him
there...
Jackson Elias:
Elias
was an explorer and student of cult activity across the planet. His best known
work remains The Sons of Death which examines the resurgence of Thuggee cults
in a post Sleeman sub-continent. Elias was a cynic and a realist who disputed
the existence of magic or supernatural entities; this attitude made him many
enemies amongst those whom he was studying and it is possibly this which led to
his death, by murder, in New York. All of his works focus on the power of cults
to subvert the weak and fearful through staged representations of magical
‘power’; they were all edited by their publisher, Jonah Kensington, of the
Prospero Press in New York. They include:
1:
Skulls Along the River (1910) – exposes head-hunter cults along the
Amazon basin;
2:
Masters of the Black Arts (1912) – surveys supposed sorcerous cults
throughout history;
3:
The Way of Terror (1913) – analyzes the systemisation of fear through
cult organizations; warmly reviewed by Georges Sorel;
4:
The Smoking Heart (1915) – first discusses historical Mayan cults,
then goes on to detail instances of present-day Central American death cults;
5-6:
Sons of Death (1918) – outlines the activities of modern-day
Thugs;
7:
Witch Cults of England (1920) – Summarizes the details of covens in nine
English counties with interviews of practicing English witches; Rebecca West
thought some of the material trivial and overworked;
8: The Black Power (1921) –
expands upon The Way of Terror;
includes interviews with several anonymous cult leaders.
Chariots
of the Gods? (Erinnerungen an die Zukunft: Ungelöste Rätsel der Vergangenheit) –
Erich von Däniken:
In
1968, von Däniken published his world-shaking opus: the Earth, he says, has been visited by extra-terrestrial
visitors for thousands of years and this visitation is visible in the ancient
artworks and artefacts of bygone cultures. The German author mined a rich vein
of UFO paranoia in an era when the phenomenon was an uncodified mystery and he
helped to drive home the tent-pegs of this mania before anyone knew what an
‘X-File’ was.
Von
Däniken’s theories are relatively uninteresting today but he manages to pack
into his books images and evaluations of various neolithic, Mayan and other
Stone Age relics, that nibble at the edge of the Mythos’ intervention in the
history of the world and which would otherwise be unavailable to the casual
investigator.
Remnants
of Lost Empires – Otto Dostmann:
“Otto
Dostmann's theory that the monolith is a remnant of the Hunnish invasion and
had been erected to commemorate a victory of Attila over the Goths is as
logical as assuming that William the Conqueror reared Stonehenge."
-“Shadows
of Yog-Sothoth”, Sandy Petersen
Dostmann’s
work is wildly conjectural and world-spanning, attempting to resolve the
current global situation in terms of vanished civilisations, specifically,
Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Mu. His arguments and proofs lurch drunkenly
from the logical to the crazy from page to page and leave the reader as much
vaguely discomfited as cheated of a satisfying rationale: he is definitely the
Erich von Däniken of his day.
Fortunately,
captured within his nebulous arguments is the chromolithographic image of a
lost, ancient stele, which, along with Dostmann’s analysis attempting to prove
that this is the language of Atlantis, is a key to understanding the
fundamentals of Aklo; this image is
undated and its whereabouts are not referred to in the text. To date, no-one
has come forward to publish a paper on this information and it remains a
‘word-of-mouth’ irony amongst those researchers in the know.
On
Ancient Civilisations – Sir Amery Wendy-Smith:
An
archaeologist who was known as the inventor of the (now superseded)
“Wendy-Smith Test” for dating artefacts, Sir Amery Wendy-Smith’s best known
work was the 1910 title On Ancient
Civilisations. It correlates and contrasts many Levantine and African
societies on the basis of their religious architecture and tomb structures. It
contains a folding plate with an engraving of the G’harne Fragments.
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