The Bible.

Tree of Life, Garden of Pomegranates, Golden Dawn, The Book of Enoch, Practical Magick, The Grand Grimoire (WHICH I'M SELLING), The Book of Solomon

PhilosophicalFrog is the keeper of the cheese. We are only the lemon merchants.

Does Principia Discordia count as occult literature?

On a different note, does anyone have any good suggestions for young children's literature? I have always looked forward to being able to read to my children and get them interested in the same stuff that I read when I was younger. Unfortunately even sci-fi juveniles are a little too much for my three year old right now. Any suggestions that could keep me from reading the same Dr. Seuss and Sendak books over and over and over would be appreciated.

Bodomlord, if you like, I'm selling The Satanic Rituals, The Key of Solomon the King, and Grimorium Verum right now. Those are all really great books in terms of occultism.

Started reading 1984 today. Got six pages in; didn't have a lot of time. Great prose so far!

Re occult books, would 'Zohar' and the Sixth and Seventh books of Moses count?

Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy is the mother lode, but good luck plowing through it. Had it for probably twenty years, never could get traction. Of course I probably had no reason to be trying. Not exactly a practical volume, that one, and it's not something one can really read "for pleasure."

Crowley's autobiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, is actually really interesting if a little unwieldy. For all his narcissism, he was an intelligent, well read guy who lived a robust life, and makes for a decent raconteur. I hope you like hearing about mountain climbing, though.

TINTIN!

...is kinda racist.

Some of the cornerstones of my childhood were the things I look at now and go "Holy fuck, that's racist". Tintin is a prime example, but at the same time, thoroughly enjoyable. Same goes for the Tom and Jerry cartoons, a boxed-set of which I recently purchased.

I can't really remember what I had read to me at age three - Tons of accessible factual books like the "eyewitness" series, which is essentially a series of books containing photographs and really basic information about a range of things - really got me into science, but I dunno if the series exists any more.

Sure, but it's easy enough to avoid the worst examples. The vast majority of Tintin books have no racism whatsoever. I don't think Tintin in the Congo is even published in America, as it's by far the worst one.

Also, it's ridiculous to throw away an entire mythology because of the world-view of the time doesn't match up to ours. Still a fantastic series of adventurous books! Also, Winnie the Pooh is one of the finest books ever written for young minds - you should get it and read it to your child. It's fantastic and perfect.

Finished devouring this today after I had started reading with mild interest last night. Fucking amazing novella. The usual captivating (for me at least) post-human mind-upload carnival, but with some unique takes on key tropes of the "genre" and tightly interwoven considerations of the selfish gene and the consciousness it makes use of. Outright bizarre in places, but grippingly so. Just plain fun to read too.

ok, after your description and the first things I saw on the page - I'm on it.

I'll probably be checking out some of those occult works as well. Had my introduction a few months ago when I picked up Qabalah, Qliphoth, and Goetic Magic by Thomas Karlsson. Pretty interesting, cool stuff.

We were talking about literature appropriate for children though.

Read aloud by an adult. Come on.

Yeah, as long as an adult is there to basically explain "hey, black people aren't like that, Japanese people aren't like that, people just thought racial and national stereotypes were REALLY funny back then," it'd be fine. Herge also backed way off on them as time went on, even going back and obscuring some of them in his older works himself, so the modern editions are generally pretty OK, except for a few doozies.

When I was reading Tintin, all racistness totally blew past me. Not one Asian or African-American at my elementary school looked like anyone in the books. For that matter, neither did any of the white people. I wasn't raised by racists, so I didn't even know to laugh in mock at the caricatures.

I don't know if kids would actually be interested, but I really liked the Little Nemo comic compendium my brother gave me. That has some oddly drawn (aka: potentially racist, if you insist on that kind of thing) character art.

Almost through with A Storm of Swords, so I went ahead and ordered Feast and Dance. I keep hearing I should be prepared to be bored and/or irritated, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Hello everyone!
I need some recomendation, and I'm sure this is a good forum to ask for it...
I'm looking for a novel similar to what Umberto Eco has done in his Foucault Pendulum (or some of his other works) - something very historical, and that has a very large content (philosophy, esoteric, mythology,... themes, it can have only one of these themes if it is well used). So, the most important aspect for me would be the atmosphere (like in the Name of the Rose) and I'm more into underground (but complex) writers who write about more occult, obscure, esoteric, fantastic themes. The story may deal with anything, from Kaballah, mythology, to philosphy.
Sorry if there are any errors, I'm not used to writing in English, and feel free to ask for any precision.
Thank you.

Frank Herbert's Dune may not seem like an obvious answer but I think it meets most of your requirements. Haven't read Eco though.

Thank you inhumanist, Frank Herbert's Dune is not the novel I was looking for but I like the thematics of this one and I'll have to read it. I was maybe looking for something more 'ancient', but thank you though.

They're perhaps a bit different to Eco's work, but you might enjoy Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (in order: 'Quicksilver', 'The Confusion' and 'The System of the World'), Peter Carey's 'The Chemistry of Tears' and Tom McCarthy's 'C'.

EDIT: If you're into philosophy and don't mind science fiction, I'd also recommend Stephenson's 'Anathem' (it's set in a monastery, if that helps, hehe).

Just cracked open Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices by Dr. Christopher Hyatt, PHD. Interesting so far, nothing great. Hasn't really gotten into the exercises yet, though.

The collected works of Jorge Luis Borges are the answer. He wrote short stories rather than novels, but he absolutely fulfills all of your criteria. Fantastic, philosophical, very historical, esoteric, etc. Very complex, as well.

Thank you guys! I'll try to read the collected works by Borges as it seems very well written and well-received (maybe I'll begin with Ficciones or The Aleph, the most famous ones), and I think that the format of short stories indeed goes well with what I'm looking for. And I'm also looking forward to reading Stephenson's Anathem, although Baroque seems more representative of 'ancient' philosophy and esoterism (it is difficult to begin with such a great novel: three books...).

All of his collected works only end up filling a fairly brief volume, it sounds like way more than it is. There are tons of single novels longer than everything he wrote in his entire life. He was just very very good at packing in tons of meaning into a very small space; some of his stories are barely a couple of pages long.

So, the Hyatt book was a bit goofy. For as much as I respect his intelligence and good humor, it was basically just a compilation of various methods Crowley and other yogis have recorded over the years reiterated in his obnoxious writing style. I've gotten results using these methods, but the way the book is executed does nothing for me. I much prefer Crowley's purple prose, as someone else on this board aptly described it.

I've started The Walls Came Tumbling Down, which is a screenplay Robert Anton Wilson wrote that never made it into production. Very good, thus far. Wish it had been filmed. The way Wilson writes screenplays is very similar to the way I write them.

I've got a lot of books stacked up to read, and I'm not sure where to go after here. I could keep on the RAW train (easy to do) with Quantum Psychology or The New Inquisition, but I'm pretty sure I've burned myself out on him for a while.

I'd really like to read a novel I could happily get lost in. Heavy reading is fun but can be exhausting. At least for me. Has anyone read The Dice Man by Luke Reinhart or whatever his name is?

Today I have finished reading Helpless by Barbara Gowdy in English and I liked that book a lot. It is very captivating story from my point of view, I recommend.
I enjoy reading books in English language, however difficult they are.

I was at a loss for more music to order with my amazon gift card so I decided to splurge on my favorite author, the illustrious Jack Vance. Here's what I came away with:

Nopalgarth (The whole series in one edition. Contains: Nopalgarth, Son of the Tree, and The Houses of Iszm)

The Asutra (This is the conclusion of the Durdane trilogy. I read the first two about a year ago and never got around to ordering the third. Probably going to start from the beginning as I remember being very endeared to Gastel Etzwane's drama)

Big Planet and Showboat World (These are part of the same story I guess? I read a very brief description of "Big Planet" and it sounded exactly like the kind of setting Vance could stretch out in. Crash land on a hostile planet...fight for survival/escape)

The Languages of Pao

Suldrun's Garden, Madouc, and The Green Pearl (The legendary Lyonesse trilogy. I've already read these three in a digital copy but that's just not proper. Looking forward to re-reading this one once the paperbacks show up. Definitely his most "sword and sorcery" series but it's got that engimatic Vancian touch in the cultures/characters/dialogue.)

Araminta Station and Ecce and Old Earth (Books 1 and 2 of the Cadwal Chronicles. Unfortunately the third one, Throy, was way too expensive so I'm hoping to pick that up later. No real clue what this series is about but I have a lot of faith, obviously.)

Marune, Wyst, and Trullion (The Alastor series! This is probably his most well-known work that I haven't read yet. Once again I haven't even bothered to get an idea what the story is about. I've got a distinct feeling it will involve long voyages with disparate characters and the most colorful cultures imaginable.)

The Dragon Masters and The Five Gold Bands (Two stand-alone novels, issued in a double-pack for the miserly among us. I haven't read many stand-alone works by Vance outside of The Blue World. I'm expecting these to be incredibly punchy and colorful. I think one or the other is a HUGO winner, not that that means much to me really.)

So there it is! I can't wait for some of these to start showing up. If he has a substandard work to his name I'm about to find it.

Don't forget to raise a glass in memory of Prof. J. R. R. Tolkien tonight, as it's his birthday. Wassail!

It's still the third in England so here's to John Ronald Reuel's 11².
I'm reading the Silmarillion and I am enjoying it greatly. As a work of original Mythology it is impressive. And despite its (for lack of a better word, I know that means something else) epic style of narration it is touching like little else.

Just like to say thanks to STORM for the recommendation "The way of the wyrd" by Brian Bates.Obviously i haven't read it yet' but the summary for the story sounds like just what i was looking for.I also noticed he had another book that looked interesting too "THE REAL MIDDLE EARTH: MAGIC & MYSTERY IN THE DARK AGES" .

Currently reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, which does a great job of summing up his views (principally modern adaptations of Hinduism and Buddhism). It and The Way of Zen are my favorites of his.

Also started Slaughterhouse Five, which I hadn't gotten around to.

I absolutely love 'Slaughterhouse 5'; it was the first Vonnegut I read, and remains one of my favourite novels of all time.

Has anyone got any information on a writer named Adobe James? I got this collection of horror stories that has his novel "The Road to Mictlantecutli" on it. It's a some sort of an illustration of the Aztecs' kingdom of the dead. Very powerful and inspired story, one of my all time favourites. The internet doesn't seem to know much about him, and I'm very curious if he has written something else too. Any help would be appreciated.

@Calusari: Same here. It's a really great example of a war commentary turned into something very individualistic and entertaining even outside of the satire and political ramifications of it. I also really love Cat's Cradle's angle on the atomic bomb/end of the world scenario (even relevant today, really) and a lot of the stories in Welcome to the Monkey House are amazing. Shame I haven't gotten to read more Vonnegut lately due to schoolwork and etc.

Yeah, Cat's Cradle is quite stunning. I haven't had the time to read as much Vonnegut as I'd like to, either; I really want to explore his short stories, finally.

I think the last book of his that I read was 'Hocus Pocus', which doesn't seem to get a lot of critical attention; I really enjoyed it, actually - it's a work of poignant, crazy brilliance.

@ Nahsil:
I liked that one, too. I have yet to read The Way of Zen, though. Will probably do so soon.

The only Vonnegut I've read is Slapstick, which I enjoyed immensely.