The SOL Library · Primary sources
Sacred Texts
The sources our research stands on: ancient scripture, esoteric classics, and the landmarks of comparative religion. Read what each text is, where it came from, and why it matters.
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- ChristianityJudaism3rd to 1st century BCE
The Book of Enoch
Attributed to Enoch; translated by R. H. Charles, 1917
An ancient Jewish apocalyptic work describing the fall of the Watchers, cosmic journeys, and visions of judgment. Quoted in the New Testament epistle of Jude, preserved complete only in Ethiopia.
About this text - Hermeticism1st to 3rd century CE
Corpus Hermeticum
Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; translated by G. R. S. Mead
Seventeen Greek dialogues from Roman Egypt, composed around 100 to 300 CE, on mind, cosmos, and spiritual rebirth. This guide separates the ancient Corpus from later Hermetic works and modern retellings.
About this text - HermeticismAlchemyFirst attested 8th century CE, in Arabic
The Emerald Tablet
Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; translated by Robert Steele and Dorothea Waley Singer (1928)
The shortest and most influential text in Western alchemy: about a dozen cryptic lines that alchemists treated as the compressed formula of the Great Work. The popular slogan "as above, so below" is a later shortening, not the Tablet's own words.
About this text - KabbalahJudaismBetween the 2nd and 6th century CE
Sefer Yetzirah
Anonymous; translated by W. Wynn Westcott, 1893
The Book of Formation: the earliest surviving work of Jewish esoteric cosmology, describing creation through the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
About this text - GnosticismChristianityComposed 1st to 2nd century CE; Coptic manuscript, 4th century
The Gospel of Thomas
Attributed to Didymus Judas Thomas; translated by Mark M. Mattison
A collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, without narrative, discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Some sayings parallel the canonical Gospels; others present a strikingly interior teaching.
About this text - Gnosticism3rd to 4th century CE
Pistis Sophia
Anonymous Gnostic authors; Askew Codex
The longest surviving Gnostic scripture: post-resurrection dialogues in which Jesus recounts the fall and redemption of the aeon Sophia and maps the unseen architecture of the cosmos.
About this text - Ancient EgyptNew Kingdom, circa 1550 BCE, with older roots
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Translated by P. Le Page Renouf, with commentary by Édouard Naville
The Egyptian funerary corpus properly titled "The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day": spells, hymns, and the weighing-of-the-heart judgment scene that guided the dead through the underworld.
About this text - HinduismCirca 2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE
The Bhagavad Gita
Attributed to Vyasa; English verse translation
The central dialogue of Hindu scripture: on a battlefield, Krishna teaches the warrior Arjuna the paths of action, devotion, and knowledge, and the nature of the imperishable self.
About this text - TaoismCirca 4th century BCE
Tao Te Ching
Attributed to Laozi; James Legge translation
The founding text of Taoism: eighty-one brief chapters on the Way that cannot be named, effortless action, and the power of yielding, attributed to the sage Laozi.
About this text - BuddhismCompiled circa 3rd century BCE
The Dhammapada
Sayings of the Buddha; Pali canon; translated by F. Max Müller (1881)
The best-loved collection in the Pali canon: 423 verses of the Buddha’s teaching on mind, craving, and liberation, opening with the declaration that mind precedes all things.
About this text - Greek PhilosophyWritten circa 170 to 180 CE
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161 to 180 CE
The private notebooks of a Roman emperor practicing Stoic philosophy: reminders to himself on mortality, duty, and the discipline of perception, never intended for publication.
About this text - JudaismChristianity2nd century BCE
The Book of Jubilees
Anonymous; translated by R. H. Charles, 1917
A retelling of Genesis and Exodus revealed to Moses on Sinai, structured in forty-nine-year jubilee cycles, with an angelology and calendar the biblical text does not contain.
About this text - Norse MythologyPoems 9th to 13th century CE; manuscript circa 1270
The Poetic Edda
Anonymous Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows
The primary source of Norse mythology: the anonymous poems of the Codex Regius, including the Völuspá’s account of the world’s creation and destruction and Odin’s winning of the runes.
About this text - ChristianityJudaismTexts from the 2nd century BCE to the early centuries CE
The Forgotten Books of Eden
Various ancient authors; edited by Rutherford H. Platt, 1926
A one-volume gathering of books outside the biblical canon: the Conflict of Adam and Eve, 2 Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Odes of Solomon, and more.
About this text - Depth PsychologyFirst published 1890
The Golden Bough
James George Frazer; abridged edition, 1922
Frazer’s vast comparative study of magic, ritual, and the dying-and-reviving god, the book that made the cross-cultural study of religion a discipline and shaped a century of literature.
About this text - TheosophyPublished 1877
Isis Unveiled, Volume I
H. P. Blavatsky, 1877
Blavatsky’s first major work: a thousand-page argument that an ancient wisdom tradition underlies both the religions and the sciences of the modern West, and that both have forgotten it.
About this text
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