There is a huge diversity of books that can easily be suggested in line with this forum. Feel free to make suggestions as you see fit. Nothing is necessarily off-limits but please explain if you think it may be questionable or if you have a particular reason why it fits. I am just going to start off with a few I like and have focused on heavily in recent years. Qutub, also called The Point by Andrew Chumbley The Philosophers' Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination by Patrick Harpur Polaria: The Gift of the White Stone by W. H. Müller IJYNX: The Grand Dreaming of a Treasured Eye by Blair MacKenzie Blake - "...glittering wordplay... dazzling in their jeweled splendour. The sheer torrent of brilliance suggests to me a cascade, arrested, carved in rock-hard and unyielding prose. When recited aloud they create a devestatingly hypnotic effect. Thank you for a sumptous feast." - Kenneth Grant Datura: An Anthology of Esoteric Poesis edited by Ruby Sara The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth by Robert Graves Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century by Marina Warner - why wouldn't a book with that title not fit in here? The Lucid View: Investigations into Occultism, UFOlogy and Paranoid Awareness by Aeolus Kephas - "Replete with fascinating information, marshaled and presented colorfully in a sustained flow of exciting imagery, The Lucid View is a compelling witness to the choices that lie open to us. Utterly intrihuing." - Kenneth Grant Homo-Serpiens: An Occult History of DNA from Eden to Armageddon by Aeolus Kephas - The first line in the author's note sets the tone: "What follows is a work of 'Imaginal Landscaping.' It is an attempt to use myths, both ancient and modern, as maps for exploration of the psyche and, by extension, reality at large." The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell The Grail Legend by Emma Jung & Marie-Louise von Franz A lot of those are actually good introductions to the intended spirit of this forum. I tried to keep this in mind starting off.
Here are a few more (some ambiguous) titles: Mysterium Artorius: Arthurian Grail Glastonbury Studies - An Introduction & Evocation by Paul Weston The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies by Robert Kirk Liber Lilith: A Gnostic Grimoire by Donald Tyson The People of the Secret by Ernest Scott The New View Over Atlantis by John Michell The Sufis by Idries Shah Convolvulus and Other Poems by Kenneth Grant Opuscula Magica I & II by Andrew Chumbley The Flight Into Egypt: Binding the Book by Timothy C. Ely The Red Goddess by Peter Grey Borough Satyr: The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare by Various Authors, compiled and edited by Robert Ansell The Holy Books of Thelema by Aleister Crowley Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld by Patrick Harpur The Philosophy of "As If" by Hans Vaihinger Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival by Joscelyn Godwin Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam by Peter Lamborn Wilson The Mythic Image by Joseph Campbell The Secret Life of Movies: Schizophrenic and Shamanic Journeys in American Cinema by Jason Horsley TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James Frazer Hecate's Fountain by Kenneth Grant
Good list and interesting suggestions. I have about half of them of which I again have maybe read 50%. Coincidentally and probably inspired by our Spare-discussion I am reading Borough Satyr right now although I had already bought that a couple of years ago.
There is a lot more I could list here K but I'm trying to keep it simple and as diverse as possible to start. I also would like others to chime in with some suggestions of their own... if anyone has any.
Leaving out the various leads you left like Grant, Spare or printers like Fulgur or Scarlet Imprint (DevoteD, Legion49, Mark Allen Smith's The Red King which I haven't read yet etc.), some others could be: RJ Stewart: The Underworld Initiation Nigel Jackson: Compleat Vampyre Clark Ashton Smith: The Last Oblivion C.G. Jung: Man and His Symbols; & Memories, Dreams, Reflections Claude Lecouteux: Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages Mario Praz: The Romantic Agony E.H. Gombrich: Art and Illusion Thomas Ligotti: Teatro Grottesco .
I picked up Thomas Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco upon your recommendation a while back. As of right now I have only read about half the stories in it but I did find it quite good. Very nightmarish. Here are a few more suggestions off the top of my head: Vril: The Power of the Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton - there are also three volumes of his work titled The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Edward Bulwer-Lytton that is also nive to have on hand. Vril is not included in any of them though which is why I have it standing alone. Being In Dreaming by Florinda Donner Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares edited by S. T. Joshi Mundis Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal by Henry Corbin The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson Liber Novus: The Red Book by C. G. Jung Etidorhpa by John Uri Loyd The Arhetypal Imagination by James Hollis Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol - personally I like the Norton Critical Edition of these works because it has the complete Alice cycle of stories and critical essays. And speaking of these Norton Critical Editions, I also like... The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Edition) edited by Maria Tatar - very nice volume with all the standard fairy tales in various versions for comparison along with critical essays. There are a whole series of these Norton books and they are all good but these two are my personal favorites. The Theater and its Double by Antonin Artaud What is Surrealism? by Andre Breton A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
