• Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!

Book Club Recommended Reading List for Chao-Animist Necromancy

A communal reading and discussion exercise for a particular book/series.

MorganBlack

Zealot
Joined
Nov 18, 2024
Messages
223
Reaction score
484
Awards
4
Chao-Animist Necromancy, my half-joke fancy name for just Traditional Western Magic and Witchcraft, with some modern adaptations.

For newcomers who have not yet ambered in cruft their personal operative myths... I say start with Chaos Magic, then move into practices that make you calm and focused.

In trad sorcery you get what you bring, so start with Mitch Horowitz's - '30-Day Mental Challenge'.

Do it until you have control over your imagination and are not a bitter, sniveling asshole. (As we all start off as). I consider this equivalent mastering the Practicus Grade, and the element of 'Water' in the Golden Dawn system.

In trad sorcery you get what you bring, so bring your best self, as they say

-----------------------------------------------
In his book ' Pieces of Eight' chaos magician and shamanic practitioner Gordon White gives his recommend reading list for a minimum credible Rune Soup chaos magic library.

There is Magic, which is a very different category from the things that are merely magical. This list goes a a long way to help newcomers to learn which is witch is what. Many practitioners and seekers tend to smear it all together under the ubiquitous word Persian loan-word "magic" , so I appreciate White's breakdown into more distinctive and useful categories.

I have some of my 2025 essential reading I'll add below, but I think this list is super solid, and I'll post it here unedited first.

-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
Rune Soup Chaos Magic Library
-----------------------------------------------

Chaos Magic
------------------------
Liber Kaos – Peter J Carroll
Liber Null & Psychonaut – Peter J Carroll
Psybermagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magick – Peter J Carroll
The Apophenion – Peter J Carroll
The Octavo – Peter J Carroll
Epoch: The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos – Peter J Carroll & Matt Kabryn
Pieces of Eight – Gordon White
Necronomicon - Simon (edited)

------------------------
Western Magic and Witchcraft (Practical)
------------------------
The Magical Treatise of Solomon or Hygromanteia – Ioannis Marathakis
The Lesser Key of Solomon – Joseph Peterson
Apocalyptic Witchcraft – Peter Grey
The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation – Hans Dieter Betz
The Book of St Cyprian: The Sorcerer’s Treasure – José Leitāo
Book 4 – Aleister Crowley
Three Books of Occult Philosophy – Henry Cornelius Agrippa
The Orphic Hymns - Apostolos N. Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow
The Chaos Protocols – Gordon White

------------------------
Western Magic and Witchcraft (Historical/Contextual)
------------------------
Geosophia - Jake Stratton-Kent
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books – Owen Davies
Lucifer: Princeps – Peter Grey
Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits – Gordon White
Mystical Origins of the Tarot – Paul Huson
The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus – Gary Lachman
Thrice Great Hermetica and the Janus Age – Joseph P Farrell
Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman World – Daniel Ogden
The Classical World – Robin Lane Fox
Comparing Religions – Jeffrey Kripal
Aleister Crowley: The Biography – Tobias Churton
The Ancient Mysteries – Marvin Meyer
The Sacred and the Profane – Mircea Eliade
The Origins of the World’s Mythologies – E.J. Michael Witzel
Sinister Forces vol 1, 2 and 3 – Peter Levenda
The Red Book – C. G. Jung
Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic – Stephen Skinner
Techniques of Solomonic Magic – Stephen Skinner

-------------------------------
Psi and Science
-------------------------------
The Science Delusion – Rupert Sheldrake
Consciousness Beyond Life – Pim Van Lommel
Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics – Chris Carter
Authors of the Impossible – Jeffrey Kripal
Cosmic Trigger vol 1 – Robert Anton Wilson
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual – Bill Mollison

---------------------------------
UFOs and Spirits
---------------------------------
Supernatural – Graham Hancock
Dimensions – Jacques Vallée
Confrontations – Jacques Vallée
Forbidden Science vol 1, 2 and 3 – Jacques Vallée
The Super Natural – Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Streiber
The Trickster and the Paranormal – George P. Hansen
Final Events – Nick Redfern
Food of the Gods – Terence McKenna

--------------------------------
Economics and Probability
--------------------------------
Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder – Nicholas Nassim Taleb
The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives – Leonard Mlodinow
The Internet is Not the Answer – Andrew Keen
Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy – Charles Hugh-Smith

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan's 2025 Additional Recommendations
-----------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
Essential Core Concepts
---------------------------------
-- Karen Armstrong - A Short History of Myth (2005)
-- Patrick Harpur - Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld (2003)
-- Patrick Harpur - The Secret Tradition of the Soul (2011)
-- Dr. Gregory Shaw - Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus
-- Porphyry - On Images
--Ramsey Dukes - SSOTBME Revised

---------------------------------
Chaos Magic / New Thought
---------------------------------

-- Mitch Horowitz - 'The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality'
-- Mitch Horowitz - '30-Day Mental Challenge'
-- Neville Goddard - All of his Law of Assumption (avoid all the Law of Attraction people who add unnecessary imaginative constructs)
-- Peter J. Carroll, and others - This Is Chaos: Embracing the Future of Magic
I higly recommend Chap. 8 by Ivy Corvus: Thread Theory: A New Chaos Approach
This is shocking close to to my own theories and practical addition, and hits on what is overlooked point in the entire practice.

---------------------------------
Grimoires ( Classic)
---------------------------------
-- Grimorium Verum
-- Pietro d'Abano - The Heptameron
-- Abraham of Worms - The Book of Abramelin
-- The Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber Juratus)
-- The Picatrix

---------------------------------
Contemporary Books
---------------------------------
-- Stephen Skinner - The Goetia of Dr Rudd
For a less-spooky-than-GV pratice Skinner's book will introduce you to the archetypal ritual structures of Western Magic.
-- Joseph Peterson and Stephen Skinner, all books,
Pay attetnion to their work re-covering and translating primary sources of the traditon.
-- Jake Stratton-Kent
For his historical takes reviving the Greek thread of Goetia. But most importantly , read for his general operative stance attitude toward practice. Game knows game.
-- Aaron Leitch - Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires
Read for a much excellent attempt to comprehensively and concisely get a handle for what is going on - the symbolism and the living embodied poetry of Goetia and ceremonial magic overall .
-- Jake Stratton-Kent - Pandemonium
-- David Rankine - Claves Intelligentiarum
-- Jake Stratton-Kent - The Sworn and Secret Grimoire (Night School)

---------------------------------
Philosophical / Theological / Practical (Classic)
---------------------------------
-- Iamblichus - On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis)
-- Michael Psellus - On The Operation Of Daemons (De Operatione Daemonum)
-- The Chaldean Oracles
-- The Corpus Hermeticum
-- Plato - Timaeus
-- The Bible - For those approaching necromancy / Goetia from a Judeo-Christian mythic framework. Those with religious Christo-trauma from growing up in the big box brand American churches, start with the Book of Revelations, and the Psalms (which preceed Chistianity.
-- Agrippa - Three Books of Occult Philosophy
-- Pseudo-Agrippa - The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy

---------------------------------
Conjure, Hoodoo, Brujeria, Hechicería' - New World Witchcraft (Practical)
---------------------------------

-- Harry Middleon Hyatt - Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft & Rootwork Vols. 1-5
-- Catherine Yronwode - Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic
-- Brother Moloch - Online. For all the advice he gave us Gen-Xers coming out of the 1990's Boomer lodge magic head trip.
-- Malcom Mills - Potion Book (stolen and published by Herman Slater)
-- Starr Casas - Old Style Conjure: Hoodoo, Rootwork, & Folk Magic

Almost there!
-- S. Jason Black (with Christopher S. Hyatt ) - Pacts with the Devil
-- Tarostar's "witchcaft" books -
- Knocking off points for presenting (er, or "appropriating". as the kids say these days) New World Conjure / Brujeria as European "pagan" witchcraft.
But whatever , it was the 1980's and people knew next to nothing. And his work is still useful in a sorecerous practice
Post automatically merged:

Oh!
---------------------------------
Morgan's Essential Core Concepts Addendum
---------------------------------

-- George P. Hansen - The Trickster and the Paranormal

Since this was on Gordon's list I originally didn't add it, but on second I wanted to highlight it here.

I can't recommend Hansen's book highly enough. Be sure to read it along with the others in this category, then watch connections bubble up in your brain.

Where it fits.
The more paranormal dynamic and characteristics of evocation come into play when you bring thought-beings (daimons, spirits) 'out' , of the 'Mental Plane' and 'down' into to the colorful and chaotic Carnival of the Sublunar World. There they take on bodies that are made of the more tempestuous astral flux.

The Trickster element comes into play in the practive here, mostly becasue of the chaotic emotions that come with indivduality this far 'down' into Duality. This is the point where the more traditional tools will start to make a lot more sense .

Mastering you emotions is key here. You can also rile them up for spiritual warfare protected targets, but that hits in advanced sorcery techniques that is not without some danger
Post automatically merged:

Joshua Cutchin - Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal

This book stands on it own. I should probably make a category called...

Essential Late-Stage Core Concept
(Don't open until a couple of years of strictly agnostic practice)


I wasn't going to add this one, but when it was requested, I gave in.

Not becasue it bad. But becasue hits too close to home. And may swap out all useful practices the way the G.D.'s talk about become a Exempt Adept created generations of occult LARPing.

When I read it I was honestly shocked how close the descriptions of abductions mirror some of the more extreme of my own experiences using the Grimorium Verum. Reading this book was like, "Oh, thank God it's not just me." I don't do aliens, so tended to avoid this material for most of my magical career.

I still go back and forth about whether I should talk about this more. It makes me sound like I am on drugs, or insane. I do not have a history of mental illness, do drugs in ritual, and am very much the neurotypical, if a creative one.

And I hate talking about my experiences - and not all of them were so extreme - becasue I feel all that really accomplish is denying other people the opportunity to have experiences all their own.

Mine are really not important for anybody, and as should nobody else's be , except maybe here, as maybe a broad category of experience related to the Underworld Initiation. So I will leave out the salacious details and stick with the bigger picture.

Cutchin's work investigates in exhaustive detail what can resemble the deep end of practicing the Grimorium Verum, so closely that I feared having The Event (or whatever) would become the next "Look at Me, Super Magus!" (like the HGA, or Crossing the Abyss, or astral projecting into the shrubbery). So that in a year or so , scads of new demonic "traditions" would pop up talking ALL about it, and trying to sell you "magic" courses full of tattoo flash and imagination exercises guaranteed to give you the Underworld Initiation—if you just believe hard enough.

(FYI: Belief is not necessary. If you practice the GV, you do not need to project your hopes and ego into it. Take it at face value. No need to colonize your intellect with occult puffery)

I also can't say this may apply for people using the other grimoires, but the "pact-based" grimoires are deeply chthonic. If the Lesser Key is you in the Underworld looking at the Stars (see JSK and Stellas Daemonum), then GV is more like you in the Underworld looking at the Stars, but through MORE Underworld.

Even practicing GV, I can't say it presents a linear, deterministic way to guarantee to trigger this event. It doesn't. I suspect it has to happen at a certain point in your life, in your own mythic journey, when you are passing through the Death Card or at the cusp of the Dark Night of the Soul, or and need to change... AND you "step into ritual" - either accidentally, like the UFO abductee's do - or on purpose, as we magicians do.

I will say the extreme theophanic manifestations are both not necessary for practical sorcery, but when they happen, they vastly more like UFO abduction-by-daemon than visionary in-your-head experience. You will come back changed. And maybe with a power or two.

Again, I'm not going to give many specific details, what the demon looked like when he appeared in my room, where I was "taken," (not that I believe my body wen anywhere. The demons can crate "illusions" in your brain anytime they want). I will say very positive things was done to me, had some illnesses healed, it was very dramatic. When I "came back" and I instantly was joyful, ecstatically happy for about three days.

The changes in my personality since then have made me far more kind, forgiving, loving. Hardly the bitter asshole 1990 - 2010 Luciferians pose as.

... but it me took a while to deal with it - in good ways and weird, life-changing ways. The powers I came back with helped me navigate the psychopaths in the corporate world. But the changes also triggered my need for a life change. I did was quit my corporate life, and set out on my own, and started a 3D animation company.
 
Last edited:
Top