The Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa is the single most important text in the history of Western occultism. Even today, occultists use the techniques first described here, although rarely giving credit to it.
Barrett's The Magus is a direct plagiarism of a part of this book. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's systems of the Kabbalah, geomancy, elements, and seals and squares of the planets are all taken, in a large measure, from Agrippa—but for 500 years, Three Books of Occult Philosophy was almost impossible to find.
Donald Tyson took on the Herculean task of digging out the original, correcting the errors, and fully annotating the entire work. As a result, not only is this new edition easily available to scholars, but it is now fully understandable by people today. The ancient magics, in their original form, live again.
Besides the annotations, there are also extensive appendices on such topics as the elements, the magical squares, the humors, and more. Biographical and geographical dictionaries and the general index make accessing and understanding information in this book easier than ever.
This is the ultimate version of the book that is the ultimate book on magic. If you are interested in any form of magic or occultism, you must get Three Books of Occult Philosophy.
In my book, Modern Magick, I gave a brief introduction to one of the most important people in the history of magick, Dr. John Dee (1527–1608 or 1609). More than a magician, Dee was also one of the most interesting and fascinating figures of the Elizabethan Age. When he died, his home in Mortlake (a district of London on the southern bank of the... read this article
