Timeline of the Occult
See also: Timeline of Esoterica
3000 B.C – Mesopotamian use of the pentagram (to mean “corner, angle, nook; a small room, cavity, hole; pitfall”)
6th Centuary BC – Confucious, Tao Te Ching, Buddha, Pythagoras
5th Centuary AD – Christianity becomes official religion of the Roman Empire, definitive declaration of biblical canon
12?? – The Sworn Book of Honorius
1307 – Knights Templar arrested
14?? – Key of Solomon
14?? – (mid 14th centuary) oldest surviving tarot deck (Italy)
14?? – Voynich manuscript written
1455 – Gutenburg Bible
1531 – Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa published in Paris
1589 – John Dee and Edward Kelley begin the Enochian workings
1600 – Giordano Bruno executed
1614 – “first” Rosicrucian tract
16?? – Earliest confirmed knowledge of Voynich manuscript (in the collection of Georg Baresch in Prague)
1781 – Tarot as book of Thoth, Monde Primitif by Antoine Court de G?belin
1785 – How to Entertain Yourself With the Deck of Cards Called Tarot by Etteilla
1797 – The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
1855 – Transcendental Magic by Eliphas Levi (pentagram, tarot)
1875 – Theosophical Society founded
1888 – Dr. William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers found the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
1898 – Aleister Crowley joins the Golden Dawn (at age 23)
1904 – Book of the Law dictated to Crowley (published?)
1904 – Austin Osman Spare exhibited at the annual Royal Academy exhibition in London
1910 – Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck published
1912 – Book 4 published
1913 – The Book of Pleasure by Austin Osman Spare
1923 – HP Lovecraft first mentions the Necronomicon in “the Hound”
1937 – The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie
1947 – Jack Pasons and L. Ron Hubbord do the Babalon Working
1954 – Gerald Gardner publishs early works on Wicca
1956 – Initiation into Hermetics by Franz Bardon
1969 – Minutes to Go by Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Sinclair Beiles, Gregory Corso
1969 – the Satanic Bible
1972 – Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments by John C. Lilly
1975 – Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
1977 – Exo-Pyschology by Timothy Leary, Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
1978 – Liber Null by Peter Carroll
1983 – Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti by Maya Deren
1988 – Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig
1988 – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
1988 – Foucoult’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
1989 – Voudon Gnostic Workbook by Michael Bertiaux
2003 – Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
December 29, 2005 at 3:26 pm
To this I might add
*1987 Liber Null & Psychonaut – Peter J. Caroll
*2003 Book of Lies : The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult – Ed. Richard Metzger
*2005 Generation Hex – Ed. Jason Louv
January 10, 2006 at 5:53 pm
GREAT! Thank you…I might expound on my compilation at some later date.
September 11, 2006 at 7:56 am
1994-2000
grant morrison’s the invisibles
January 23, 2007 at 9:51 pm
great list.
June 10, 2007 at 5:31 pm
You need to add the formation of PDX0 of there 🙂