Mark Booth: The Secret History of the World

Reincarnation in Christianity by Geddes MacGregor

The Great Secret by Maurice Maeterlinck

Experiment in Depth by P.W. Martin

The Western Way by Caitlin and John Matthews

Simon Magus by G.R.S. Mead

The Secret of the West by Dimitri Merezhkovsky

The Ascent of Man by Eleanor Merry

Studies in Symbolism by Marguerite Mertens-Stienon

Ancient Christian Magic by Meyer and Smith

Outline of Metaphysics by L. Furze Morrish

Rudolf Steiner’s Vision of Love by Bernard Nesfield-Cookson

The Mark by Maurice Nicoll

The New Man by Maurice Nicoll

Simple explanation of work ideas by Maurice Nicoll

The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto

The Secrets of Nostradamus by David Ovason*

Metamorphoses by Ovid translated by David Raeburn

Gurdjieff by Louis Pauwels

Les Sociétés Secretes by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier

Select works of Plotinus edited by G.R.S Mead

The Double Flame: Essays on Love and Eroticism by Octavio Paz

The Cycle of the Seasons and Seven Liberal Arts by Sergei O. Prokofieff

Prophecy of the Russian Epic by Sergei O. Prokofieff

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras and Other Pythagoran Fragments translated by Florence M. Firth

The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus

King Arthur: the true story by Graham Philips and Martin Keatman

Freemasonry by Alexander Piatigorsky

Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, translated by J.M. Cohen

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps

Letters to a young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke*

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Followers of Horus by David Rohl

Dionysius the Areopagite by C.E.Rolt

Pan and the Nightmare by Heinrich Roscher and James Hillman*

Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age by Richard Rudgley

The Philosophy of Magic by Eusebe Salverte

The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria by W. Scott-Elliot

Studies in comparative religion by Frithjof Schuon

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

Annotations of the sacred writings of the Hindus by Edward Sellon

Lights Out For The Territory by Iain Sinclair

The Sufis by Idries Shah

Esoteric Buddhism by A.P. Sinnett

Man, creator of forms by V. Wallace Slater

Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith

The Occult Causes of the Present War by Lewis Spence

Egypt, myths and legends by Lewis Spence

Epiphany by Owen St. Victor

The Present Age by W.J. Stein

The principle of reincarnation by W.J. Stein

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky by George Steiner

Atlantis and Lemuria by Rudolf Steiner

The Book with Fourteen Seals by Rudolf Steiner

The Concepts of Original Sin and Grace by Rudolf Steiner

The Dead Are With Us by Rudolf Steiner

Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St Matthew by Rudolf Steiner

Egyptian myths and mysteries by Rudolf Steiner

The Evolution of Consciousness, and The Sun Initiation of the Druid Priest and his Moon-Science by Rudolf Steiner

From Symptom to Reality in Modern History by Rudolf Steiner

Inner Impulses of Evolution by Rudolf Steiner

The Karma of Untruthfulness vols I and II by Rudolf Steiner

Karmic relationships Vols I and II by Rudolf Steiner

Life Between Death and Rebirth by Rudolf Steiner

Manifestations of Karma by Rudolph Steiner

Occult History by Rudolf Steiner

The occult movement in the nineteenth century by Rudolf Steiner*

The Occult Significance of Blood by Rudolf Steiner

The Origins of Natural Science by Rudolf Steiner

Reincarnation and Karma by Rudolf Steiner

Results of spiritual investigation by Rudolf Steiner

The Temple Legend by Rudolf Steiner

Three Streams in Human Evolution by Rudolf Steiner

Verses and Meditations by Rudolph Steiner

Wonders of the World by Rudolf Steiner

The World of the Desert Fathers by Columba Stewart

Witchcraft and Black Magic by Montague Summers

Conjugal Love by Emanuel Swedenborg

Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg

Conversations with Eternity by Robert Temple*

He Who Saw Everything — a translation of the Gilgamesh epic by Robert Temple

Mysteries and secrets of magic by C.J.S. Thompson

The Elizabethan World Picture by E.M.W Tillyard

Tracks in the Snow — studies in English science and art by Ruthven Todd

The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno

Primitive Man by Cesar de Vesme

Reincarnation by Guenther Wachsmuth

Raymund Lully, Illuminated Doctor, Alchemist and Christian Mystic by A.E. Waite

Gnosticism by Benjamin Walker

Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon by Peter Washington

Tao, the Watercourse Way by Alan Watts

Secret Societies and Subversive Movements by Nesta Webster

The Serpent in the Sky by John Anthony West

The Secret of the Golden Flower by Richard Wilhelm

Witchcraft by Charles Williams

The Laughing Philosopher: a life of Rabelais by M.P. Willocks

Are These the Words of Jesus? by Ian Wilson

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda*

Mysticism sacred and profane by R.C. Zaehner

This book is the result of some twenty years of reading. Often I’ve read a book which has yielded only a sentence in my own. So the above is a selective biography. I should perhaps declare a small interest here. In the case of some of these books, I have not only read them, I have commissioned and published them too. I had originally intended that the notes would be almost as long as the text, but then the text is twice as long as intended. Perhaps it’s for the best. One more tiny, wafer-thin bit of information and this book might have exploded like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life .

It’s a peril of writing a book so wide-ranging that even as you’re going to press, new books are published which you need to read and take into account. I’d just like to mention Philip Ball’s brilliant The Devil’s Doctor , a biography of Paracelsus and The Occult Tradition by David S. Katz. Both these books show great ‘negative capability’ when it comes to the question of whether or not occult phenomena are real. Barry Strauss’s recent book on The Trojan War bolsters the idea that it was a real historical event.

I’ve put an asterisk by the books — not the obvious ones, not The Brothers Karamazov, for example — that I recommend as giving the reader a vertiginous sense of plunging into whole new worlds of thought. I’ve chosen books that are easy to read — and also, I imagine, relatively easy to find.

Discography: De Occulta Philosophia , J.S. Bach is performed by Emma Kirkby and Carlos Mena.

Beethoven spoke of the Appassionata as his most esoteric work, but for me it is his last piano sonata, no. 31 in A flat major opus 110, in the course of which, suddenly he jumps forward to the music of a hundred years later the prophesied jazz.