Books touted to open the doors of spiritual unfoldment

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I notice a lot of threads get devoted to debating religion, religious ontology, religious dogma, theism vs. antitheism, so I thought it might be a breath of fresh air to devote a thread to DIY manuals for mystical experience as well as ceremonial magic.

A couple that come up for delivering relatively small results but delivering them quickly and building a basis for larger results (probably my first recommendations):

Robert Bruce's Energy Work - it's a book filled with tactile visualisation techniques that will cause minor results quickly.

Israel Regardie's One Year Manual - 70 pages of chapter content (96 pages in total); twelve chapters, one for each of twelve sequential months where different cultivation exercises are recommended. He seems to suggest that it can get you in close to the beginnings of knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel - something I believe that the initial vision of starts with the Zelator grade of A.'.A.'. and is fully consumated in the KnC of HGA rituals in both the A.'.A.'. and Golden Dawn systems. KnC of HGA is getting the kind of experiences of Self that John of the Cross wrote his treatises on.

Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics - this one hangs at the edge because its tougher to follow than the One Year Manual, also offering more results (vouched for by a lot of people in the magical community as well as having rave Amazon reviews); I wouldn't recommend starting with it unless your really tenacious, you'd want to read the book first and understand it's complexities to see why. Lots of people bounce off of it; probably best to work through the One Year Manual first and then see if you want to give this a shot.

For more advanced work:
Israel Regardie's Complete Golden Dawn
The Liber ABA Book 4 compilation of Aleister Crowley (similarly Israel Regardie's Gems of the Equinox compilation)
Chic and Tabitha Cicero's Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn
M Isidora Forest - Isis Magick (if the Lady of 10,000 Names speaks to you)

There's a lot of good theory books out there that can help enrich the process but since this is a doing thread rather than a theory thread I'll save those in case anyone wants to know more.

A think I'd add about having read the One Year Manual - the first six months are really the most important, and I think in terms of raw involved 'stuff' to do on a particular set of monthly exercises the second month looks the most involved and off-putting. I'm probably going to take a run at it myself and keep in mind that these aren't cumulative, that later on in one of the last four exercises you're suggested to go back to review some of the more critical of the first six but that's just to get these processes up and mobilized.

Aren't there a few dangers associated with this? I've heard a lot of devotees go nuts and turn into manipulative and paranoid uber cynics with stupid mantras bouncing around in their heads constantly.

What results are you are hoping to get?

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 29 Oct 2015, 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, there are risks along those lines.

Lets just say it's best suited only for self-cultivation and by people who already have themselves pretty well together. Israel Regardie strongly recommended only considering after at least a year of psychotherapy and knowing both what you had in you and what your frailties are.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 29 Oct 2015, 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

KnC of HGA is a really big one. Aside from that - discovering for myself what's actually in it and seeing if I can help the world around me by cultivating myself through these means.

Are these books you recommended actually self-help manuals on personal growth, or are they instruction manuals on how to use the "Spiritual Realm" for personal gain?

It's the intersection of both.

Golden Dawn and Thelemic magic are a similar kind of cultivation to what you'd consider training in a martial art or expanding a particular dexterity-related skillset. The idea is generally not 'how to get more stuff' - that's more of a new age concern and occultism proper is to hazardous for people who are thinking like that.

Essentially what you're looking at is a pair of systems generally in the west, one generally seen as Rosicrucian in character and one as of the early 20th century termed Thelemic in nature, that aim toward a person having increased spiritual experiences, increased "astral travel" but rather than it being an "ooohh....aaaahhh" thing it's part of an integrated road map to get to a particular goal. That goal for magicians is the same goal for mystics, reunification with God, but the quote unquote magical path is deemed to be more comprehensive and intellectually gratifying as a person is able to work their way through their doubts in an active manner rather than trying to immediately dissolve themselves in the way a sheer mystic would. That progression along the path of return is usually mapped on the Kabbalistic/Qabalistic Tree of Life and when schools arrange their lesson plan by grade structure what you have is usually 10 grades, relating to the 10 sephira, and they'll have two numbers in a 10 - (a) = 10 - (10-a) formula where the grade order is first and the number of the sephira noted for that grade is second.

It's for the geeks who read things like Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Swami Vivikenanda, etc. and wanted to figure out how to do it themselves.

Dion Fortune wrote a short book that outlined a lot of the goals of both paths as well as delineating the differences of approach between magicians and mystics titled 'The Training and Work of an Initiate':

http://www.golden-dawn.com/eu/UserFiles ... itiate.pdf