Seeking Recommendation First time studying grimoires, would appreciate help!

[runixcube]

hey everyone! im runix, i love studying anthropology and for a while, ive been into theology! and im at a part where ive finished all the mainstream religions and i want to learn more about occult/magic!

i marked it as help, but it can be counted as opinion too… i want to know what you guys would personally reccomend to read to get started with magic! maybe actual occult books, maybe dissertations… whatever you guys see fit for a start. i just want to know if theres a starting point that you people can give me or if theres any advice on how to properly start studying the occult world. ^^

thank you so much for taking the time to read this! hope you all have a good day wherever you are!! ^^

P.S. also would appreciate if anyone can tell me where to find the original sources of some grimoires or sources for free. as a student, im sadly lacking the budget to spend money on all media…

 

[Aeternus]

hey everyone! im runix, i love studying anthropology and for a while, ive been into theology! and im at a part where ive finished all the mainstream religions and i want to learn more about occult/magic!

i marked it as help, but it can be counted as opinion too… i want to know what you guys would personally reccomend to read to get started with magic! maybe actual occult books, maybe dissertations… whatever you guys see fit for a start. i just want to know if theres a starting point that you people can give me or if theres any advice on how to properly start studying the occult world. ^^

thank you so much for taking the time to read this! hope you all have a good day wherever you are!! ^^

P.S. also would appreciate if anyone can tell me where to find the original sources of some grimoires or sources for free. as a student, im sadly lacking the budget to spend money on all media…

Welcome to the study of the occult world!

I am certainly glad to hear that you are interested in studying grimmoires. There are a lot of them. Depending on your interest, I can recommend the Black Dragon, Dragon Rouge, Ars Paulina, Ars Goetia, The Grand Grimmoire, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henrich Cornelius Agrippa, Lemegeton and many others.

If you want a good source for finding the Ars Paulina text for example, you can visit Twilit Grotto:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Additionally, you can find many others here in the library or, if you prefer the external resources, I can give you the link to the whole archive of grimoires on the Solomonic Tradition:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

May the Universe bless you in your studies.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 7:10 PM

Additional resources from the forum staff directly :

[Official] - SkullTraill's Recommended Occult Reading and Reference

Now that our library is starting to get pretty fleshed out, I've decided to make a comprehensive list of what I consider to be essential occult reading in various categories. Please note: this thread is a work in progress, and will be for the forseeable future. I want it to only include books...

wizardforums.com

 

[dzb10035]

Hi @runixcube, welcome to the rabbit holes of the grimoire world. It's great to have enthusiasm to explore the older works of magic that actually served as a foundation for our current modern day occult practice and you might find it helpful to explore things in a reverse order. When you think about classical grimoires such as "They Key of Solomon", "Ars Goetia", "Grimorium Verum", etc, you will quickly find that these works are not necessarily self-contained. In fact, while many of them can be followed step-by-step to get ritual results, there is a lot of background theory that they leave out. Lots of the grimoires actually are founded on common principles such as alchemy, astrology (via the planets + zodiac), Kabbalah, and hermeticism. Additionally, modern occult thought (i.e. from about 1920 onward) has added a lot of theory on how to understand in between the lines of grimoires in terms of theory.

So really to get started on the grimoires and to gain the most benefit from (potentially) working with them, you might want to start with some foundational books on the topics I mentioned above, so that you can speak the language of the grimoires. Additionally, reading up on some modern books on evocation can help a lot in order to contextualise what the practice of grimoires looks like. So for this, books such as "Initiation into Hermetics", "The Practice of Magical Evocation", and "Summoning Spirits" by Franz Bardon (first 2) and Konstantinos (3rd one) are great references to get started. Of course, if you want a condensed introduction through one book rather than cross referencing through multiple books, you can start with "Modern Magick" by Donald Michael Kraig, who will introduce a lot of these topics to you in a friendly accessible way through the lens of Golden Dawn magical practice. It got me started and gave me some foundational understanding that I found very helpful.

If you wish to actually practice the stuff from the grimoires, I would also recommend getting a daily praxis of ritual magic started, some meditation training, and also building up a working knowledge of protection magic. All of these are necessities to have a good practice on evocational practices, talismanic practices, and invocational practices sourced from the grimoires. This foundational knowledge and starting practices are very helpful in actually having a good practical experience with them. But I don't know if you just wanted to study or if you wanted to practice. My recommendations on resources / books mostly focus from a practical perspective to the grimoires. You can easily find many of these books online in some shape or form.