OCCULTUM
  • TRY
☰

A SCHOOL OF THE MAGICAL ARTS

Learn magic from the
grimoires themselves

Ceremonial magic, witchcraft, divination, sigils and scrying, distilled from Agrippa, the Keys of Solomon, the Golden Dawn and the folk traditions. Taught step by step, with interactive tools for practice.

183 lessons · 22 tracks · 27 free to read

twenty-two paths of study

Foundations

Start here

What magic is, where it comes from, and the core skills every tradition shares: ethics and safety, breath and grounding, the magical journal, concentration and visualisation, sacred space, correspondences, and intention and will.

The Inner Arts

Meditation, vision and dreams

The skills behind every ritual: Western meditation, the Tattvas, pathworking and guided vision, the subtle body and the Middle Pillar, the astral body and the body of light, lucid dreaming, and sound as a doorway to trance.

Elemental Magic

Fire, water, air, earth — and spirit

The oldest framework in Western magic: Empedocles' four roots, Aristotle's qualities and Galen's humours; Paracelsus' gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders; the pentagram of the elements; reading and balancing your own temperament; practical magic with each element; and the fifth element that holds them together; and the tattva tides, the five flowing in turn through the day and the breath.

The History of Magic

From Egypt to the occult revival

Five thousand years of magical practice: Egyptian heka, Greek curse tablets and theurgy, medieval grimoires, Renaissance magi, the witch trials, the Enlightenment's secret societies and the modern revival.

Western Ceremonial Magic

Grimoires, planets and ritual

The learned magic of Agrippa, the Solomonic grimoires and the Golden Dawn: the three worlds, the planets and their magic squares, the Lesser Banishing Ritual and the Middle Pillar, the Tree of Life, talismans and the consecration of tools; the Picatrix, the great handbook of astral magic behind the talisman; and the pentagram itself, from the Pythagoreans to the Golden Dawn.

Qabalah

Letters, numbers and the Tree

Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Cabala and the Hermetic Qabalah of the magicians: the Hebrew letters, Sefer Yetzirah, the four worlds and the soul, the twenty-two paths and the tarot, gematria, the divine names on the Tree, and the Qliphoth, its shadow side.

Witchcraft & Folk Magic

Herbs, candles and the moon

The practical magic of hearth and hedgerow: the Moon and the Wheel of the Year, candles, knots, charm bags and household protection, herbs and their planets, incense, oils and washes, the poison garden, and mushrooms and fungi.

Norse Magic

Galdr, seiðr and the staves

The magic of the North from the Eddas and sagas: the chanted spells of galdr and Odin's eighteen charms, the seeress and her high seat, runes of power and Egill's warning, the Icelandic magical staves, the land-spirits, elves and dead, and the Younger Futhark on the runestones of the Viking Age — told from the sources, honestly.

Stones & Metals

The lapidary arts

The virtues of stones from Pliny to the medieval lapidaries, the seven planetary metals, stones of the planets and months, working safely with stones, engraved talismanic gems, quartz and the crystal ball, and crystals in modern practice.

Divination

Tarot, runes and the stars

Methods of reading signs: the tarot's structure, reading the cards, the Major Arcana as a journey and the small cards' decans, Lenormand, the Elder Futhark runes, the Irish Ogham, geomancy and the judging of its charts, dreams and the old dream books, numerology, the Lenormand's Grand Tableau, and the astrology that underpins magical timing; and, for the tarot, the sixteen court cards, and for the ogham, the stones and the manuscripts behind the trees.

Everyday Oracles

Hands, cups, lots and omens

The folk arts of divination: casting lots from the Bible to the dice oracles of Asia Minor, asking a book, palmistry and the planets of the hand, tea leaves in the cup, the pendulum and the dowsing rod, omens and augury, and the almanac that chose the day — with an honest eye on why they seem to work, with the fingerprints the police and the palmists took up, and the French radiesthesia of the pendulum over the map.

Astrology

The language of the heavens

From Babylonian omens to William Lilly: the seven planets, the twelve houses, aspects, reading a birth chart, electional astrology for choosing the moment of a working, and the lots and lunar nodes.

Chaos & Sigil Magic

Modern, practical, experimental

Twentieth-century results-based magic: sigils, gnosis, servitors, designing your own rituals, paradigm shifting, and keeping an experimental practice honest; and the thoughtforms, tulpas and egregores behind the servitor.

Mirror Magic & Scrying

Seeing in the glass

The long history of speculum work from John Dee's obsidian mirror onward: making and consecrating a black mirror, a safe scrying practice, water, crystal, flame and smoke, the mirror of self-knowledge, and recording and testing what you see.

Hermeticism & Alchemy

The Great Work

The philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus and the art of transformation: the Hermetica and the Emerald Tablet, the Kybalion's principles, alchemical history and symbols, the inner Work and practical plant alchemy.

The Magical Papyri & Theurgy

Names, vowels and the gods of late antiquity

The working magic of Roman Egypt and the philosophy that lifted it: the Greek Magical Papyri, words of power and the seven vowels, the Headless Rite that became the Golden Dawn's Bornless Ritual, lamp and dream oracles, Iamblichus' theurgy and the tokens of the gods, and protective amulets.

Angels, Demons & the Otherworld

Who else is out there?

How the Western tradition maps the unseen: the angelic hierarchies and the angels of time, fallen angels and the demons of the grimoires, the Olympic spirits, fairy lore, the honoured dead and Dee's Enochian system — with discernment, protection and good sense; and the Enochian Keys, Watchtowers and Aethyrs as the Golden Dawn and Crowley worked them.

Thelema

The Law of Thelema and the solar adorations

Aleister Crowley's system of magick: the Book of the Law received in Cairo in April 1904 and the Stele of Revealing, Rabelais' Abbey of Thélème, the True Will and "Love is the law, love under will", Liber Resh and its four adorations of the Sun, Liber E and the magical record, the grades of the A∴A∴, and the Thoth Tarot — told from the texts, without either worship or scandal.

Shamanism & the Drum

Trance, the drum and the journey

Where the word shaman comes from and what the Siberian shamans did; the Sámi noaidi and his painted drum, burned and confiscated by missionaries and returned in our own time; Eliade's ecstasy and Harner's core shamanism; the drum journey to the lower, middle and upper worlds, practised safely; the honest debate about borrowing from living Indigenous traditions. Then deeper: the helpers and the power animal, the three worlds and the world tree, the shaman's sickness, the coat, the mirror and the rattle, soul loss and soul retrieval, the shamans of the Americas, and Korea's mudang and Japan's itako.

The Science of Letters

Letters, numbers and squares in Islamic esotericism

ʿIlm al-ḥurūf, the science of letters: the abjad numerals and chronograms, the magic squares (wafq) of the mathematicians and the talisman-makers, the buduḥ square, al-Būnī and the disputed Shams al-maʿārif, Ibn Khaldūn's judgement on the letter-magicians, and the Beautiful Names of God and the prayer beads — as history, with the respect a living faith is owed.

The Five Phases

Yin and yang, stems and branches, talismans

Chinese correlative cosmology and its magic: yin and yang and the five phases with their cycles of birth and conquest, the ten stems and twelve branches of the sixty-day cycle used since the Shang oracle bones, the Four Pillars of a birth, the Lo Shu square that is also Saturn's, feng shui, the Celestial Masters and their talismans, the almanac that still chooses the day, and the Book of Changes itself: its hexagrams, its casting with stalks and coins, and its two orders; and the twelve sovereign hexagrams that make the Changes a calendar of the year.

Folk Magic & Charms

Word charms, cunning folk and living traditions

The magic of ordinary people: ABRACADABRA, the SATOR square and AGLA; the cunning folk and the written charms they sold; the Merseburg charms and Old English healing words; Pennsylvania German powwow and Hohman's Long Lost Friend; the history of Hoodoo and conjure; and the evil eye from Mesopotamia to the blue glass bead.

Tools for practice

Timing, divination and sigil-craft, on any device.

Open the full library

Every lesson, every tool, and new material added regularly, for £9.99 / month.

Become a member