Posts Tagged ‘Libraries’

The Manic Energy of Libraries In Flux

BY: Mark

Llewellyn has recently posted an interview with Tess Whitehurst about her new book, Magical Housekeeping. While it’s mainly a PR piece promoting the book, she does mention how a home intrinsically mirrors the energy states of the inhabitants (and vice versa).

Recently I stumbled across John Ottinger’s query to the Blogosphere: How Do You Organize Your Library?

These two things came crashing together today as I’m working on making the office/library my working office. All–well, a full bookcase worth–of the occult books were on the north side of the room (my desk is against the east wall), and next to me were the fiction books. I realized I don’t need the fiction leering at me while I work, and so I decided to swap these two groups. As I was pulling books, I realized there were a couple other shelves of books that hadn’t been properly filed, and now was a good time to get everything organized.

An hour later, I’ve got another bookcase’s worth of books stacked on the floor, occult books on both walls, and the fiction stacked at the back of the room. My energy is scattered–no doubt of that–but the discoveries I’ve made. There’s been a lot of acquisitions over the last few years; now, hopefully, I’ll have some time to read them all.

In the meantime, I need to get these shelves organized. A dozen or so sticky notes dividing them into smaller categories is going to help for a bit, but some of these are going to confound pigeon-holing. Like they do.

And I need a lecturn/display stand for Jung’s The Red Book. It’s too tall for any shelf, and frankly, it begs to be left open to lure in the casual reader.

The Vast Library That Is Hermetic.com

BY: Mark

I should start building pages for the things that are on the links page, so that it’s clear why they’re here, as well as a personal reminder of how much useful information the Internet has to offer. Case in point: Hermetic.com. Claiming as their mission the act of “archiving, engaging, and encouraging the living Western Esoteric Tradition,” they’re building a virtual library of all manner of useful texts, including a fairly substantial Crowley library.

They’re also a nexus point for a number of personal sites about the Golden Dawn, the O.T.O, Dr. John Dee, Enochian matters, Chaos Magick, Qabalah, the Tarot, Thelema (and the list goes on).

I hadn’t realized they’ve got all of Crowley’s Equinox material up there (wherein I finally found the picture of the Silent Watcher I’ve been looking for for the last six months). If you’re not obsessed about finding first editions, you can’t go wrong with online versions. (The link there goes to Blair MacKenzie Blake’s book on being a Crowley bibliophile, which I’m currently reading and enjoying quite a bit.)

You may also follow Hermetic.com updates on twitter and Facebook.

Wandering the stacks at the Munich Digitisation Centre

BY: Mark

We’re giving this link its own post because there’s much to love here. The Munich Digitisation Centre at the Bavarian State College has an extensive collection of digitized books, including a number of medieval alchemy treatises. One of my favorite links is their tag cloud page. Talk about visual browsing. Each book has been carefully digitized, and each one is the sort of archaic manuscript that makes the book lover salivate.

Books on Alchemy .. Books on Magic .. Exegeses of the Bible ..