The Occult Book: A Review
Hello Arachnids!
You’re in for a relatively short book review this time. There isn’t a lot to say about this book but that doesn’t take away from it being a great starting point for someone interested in occult history.
The Occult Book was written by John Michael Greer and follows occult history from 5th and 6th century BCE to 2012. The information in this book is very compact, breaking each event down in a few paragraphs on a single page. It provides enough information without being too heavy. The Occult Book is by far not the only source you need to understand occult history but it’s a good basis to begin your research.
One very valuable tool throughout the book is the referencing of works or doctrine specific to the person or event in question. The Occult Book is chalk full of names, dates and resources to start you on your occult history journey. There are many books listed throughout by historic and influential occultists and my own reading list has expanded greatly. It’s fascinating to see how certain practices and people influence and expand on others, or their relationship to one another. This book also has a “see also” section on the bottom of each page that helps the reader know what piece of occult history is related to another. You are able to jump back and forth to see how, in some cases, a certain idea or study was started and evolved over time.
I like that The Occult Book is relatively void of opinion. With so little room and so much history to cover, it’s nice to see this book isn’t muddied with personal gnosis on each page, leaving it up to the reader to search out more information to form their own opinions on the matter. This to-the-point method can seem a little dry, but with each page moving on to another historic topic, it doesn’t leave much room for boredom.
The one thing I was, for lack of a better word, disappointed by was that there is a large jump is occult history, according to this book, between 1985 and 2012 and I find it hard to believe that nothing of importance happened in the occult world between this time. I also believe if The Occult Book was published today it would include a heavy shift in occult popularity due to the rise in access to communities via the internet. It will be interesting to see if an updated version of occult history is ever released.
Overall, I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to start a journey into occultism. The history is important, and this book provides new occultists with a base to start on, resources to follow up with and a general understanding of the evolution of occultism. It’s listed as a reference publishing and can be just as useful to the seasoned occultists as well. Even if you aren’t interesting in becoming an occultist this book can be an insightful and interesting piece of literature.