What was your first occult book?

General Discussion
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I propose a nostalgia thread!

I was digging through some of my old boxes, and came across what I believe is one of the first occult books I had purchased, early on in my years.

At ten years old, I was inquiring during the summertime into the ‘odd’ part of the bookstores, looking into things the other boys were not, because they were busy with the drib drab & excitement of daily life.

The Alchemists Handbook
Author: Frater Albertus
Forward by Israel Regardie

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I’m just re-perusing this little gem, it still has so much value that I shall surely use it again, when I come at it from a new angle, with new knowledge. Alchemical transfiguration is one of my lifetime goals, it was since I was a boy, and I am fascinated at how I was guided to do such things at a young age.

Digging through old books is FUN!

So, what was your first flavor?

Chocolate, Vanilla, or Raspberry?

Demons, Angels, Alchemy, Voodoo, Vampires, whatever?

Let’s hear it!

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My first, and still favorite, is “Hands on Chaos Magic” by Andrieh Vitimus.

400 pages of practical, non-dogmatic, goodness.

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My first REAL occult book was the Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic.

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Cantus Circaeus + The Art of Memory, Giordano Bruno.

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The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts - Arthur Edward Waite

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Lol, man, I knew this thread would get good.

Fantastic stuff everyone.

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“Modern Magick” by the late Donald Michael Kraig. A spectacular functional course that led me to all sorts of things over the past two years, including this site.

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‘Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition’ by the Ciceros.
That book ended up being a disappointment because of it’s incredible complexity. I can’t understand how they could think visualising a whole Golden Dawn Initation as a complete newbie would be possible…

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Agreed.

I’m working through Kraig’s Modern Magick…amazing…

I wonder if he decided to come back to earth or go on?

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The very first book I ever bought? Damn, that’s going pretty far back. I’ve read so many, its hard to remember what I bought, or what I borrowed.

I think the very first book on magick I ever bought was Raymond Buckland’s Book of Candle Spells.

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I hate to admit it but the first occult book I read was Silver Ravenwolf’s To Ride A Silver Broomstick. I despise her now as an author (except her book Solitary Witch which is an awesome grimoire and spellbook) but that was the first book I read.

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[quote=“Baphomet, post:11, topic:3530”]I hate to admit it but the first occult book I read was Silver Ravenwolf’s To Ride A Silver Broomstick. I despite her now as an author (except her book Solitary Witch which is an awesome grimoire and spellbook) but that was the first book I read.[/quote]Ha! I had all of Silver Ravenwolf’s stuff, even her book on working with angels. I liked her writing style, it was very friendly, and easy going. Back in the day, they were the only books I could get in my town. Just having them, I was branded a Satanist. LOL

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She’s good for the 13 year old who wants to learn how to cast a spell or two but real magic, she’s in the amateur leagues. I respect her as a person as she is the leader of the largest gathering of covens in North America and I attend their Beltaine and Samhain sabbat festivals every year but I no longer like her writings.

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Liber Null by Peter J Carroll. The opening section on mind control and dreaming really propelled my progress.

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This might be a bit crap, but the books that seriously got me practicing magick were the “Dark Is Rising” series by Susan Cooper, and “Moon Of Gomrath” by Alan Garner: bought both from my “pocket money” or maybe it was Christmas gift money when I was, I think, about 8 or 9 years old, and I played about trying to adapt the concepts in them in total earnestness for years afterwards.

I knew they were fiction, I wasn’t stupid, but I figured they were based on real folklore and I was determined to try and contact the entities and forces, and make magick work for me just like it did the kids in the books. I don’t remember how I chose them, I think my mum recommended them because she knew I was already interested in this stuff.

They were quite old-fashioned books and it’s funny, even back then I thought the good guys were mostly priggish and the “baddies” were far more interesting.

The magick and the power they describe, being wielded by children as part of some larger battle that involved ancient British spirits like Herne and people like Merlin, took me from playing at magick (something I’d mostly seen in horror movies, coz my fam had no concept of “age appropriate viewing” lol), with the rug in the living room for my Circle and twigs for wands, to seriously thinking “I want this”… hope that’s not too OT Gnosis but they were the first books I tried to work from!

They’re all set in England and Wales, and feature magickal trees like rowan and oak that grew just up the road, so it all felt very credible and grounded in my everyday reality.

My life was really shitty at that time, lots of poverty and family members losing it to drink and drugs etc., and they were the only good thing I had to hold onto of my own.

Then I read The Golden Bough aged about 10 or 11 and that was extremely influential, along with Mertz’s Red Land, Black Land about ancient Egypt, which also (bliss!) included spells and prayers! :slight_smile:

That stuff’s probably why I’m still into experimenting, because my earliest concept of magick was “take these scraps and half-truths, and make from them something that will really work”… something I hadn’t realised until I just typed this! lol

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The Golden Bough is sheer genius. The book that led to, essentially, the modern analysis of religion and mythology and the first realizations that maybe, just maybe, there could be comparisons drawn between different traditions. And in spite of the author’s ridicule of magic in general, he does an excellent job of outlining dozens of different operations in excruciating detail.

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She’s pretty cool imo. I got a chance to talk with with her years back. She really get’s out there and helps a lot of people take responsibility to make their lives better even though it’s fluffy.

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OMG!

So, when I was a kid, we had to request it at the local library and then we waited WEEKS, it might even have been months, to get a copy - I seem to remember my mum had to do it because it wasn’t allowed to a child’s card? There’s some pretty gruesome stuff in there… Anyway I just went to search it up after this thread jogged my memory, and it’s free from Amazon on Kindle!

Freakin’ AWESOME!!! Thanks guys, I would never have thought to even look for it if I hadn’t been rummaging through my memory coz of this thread! :slight_smile:

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Praxis der Schwarzen und Weißen Magie & Der Weg zum Wahren Adepten

Or in English:
Practical Black and White Magic & Initiation into Hermetics

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Necronomicon spellbook

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