Magical Reading List
I’ve created this reading list of 50 books for aspiring magicians, published from 1904 to 2020. Actually, there are 51. Make of it what you will.
Dhalgren
to wound the autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name. The in-dark answered with wind. All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; […]
The Eagle’s Gift
The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the eye of the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity. The […]
Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits. John C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, The Julian Press, Inc., […]
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Introduction: A Musico-Logical Offering. The book opens with the story of Bach’s Musical Offering. Bach made an impromptu visit to King Frederick the Great of Prussia, and was requested to improvise upon a theme presented by the King. His improvisations formed the basis of that great work. The Musical Offering and its story form a […]
Engine Summer
The beginning. . . . If I am only a story now, I must have a beginning. Shall I begin by being born? Is that a beginning? I could begin with that silver glove you wear; that silver glove, and the ball . . . Yes, I will start with Little Belaire, and how I […]
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
At the heart of this book (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind) is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3,000 years ago and […]
The Laws of Form
The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin […]