Mocata's Library of Magic, Religion, and the Supernatural

Originally published in French in 1961 under the title Histoire en 1000 images de la magie , this particular book first saw an English-language publication in 1964.  As the title would suggest, this is a picture-heavy book.  It covers magical and religious practices of ancient societies, obscure tribes, and modern groups.  Being a book focused around images, the text is generally concise, rather than going into depth on any given topic. Front cover of English-language edition What is possibly the book's greatest impact is a rather simple thing.  A copy of this book belonged to Anton LaVey back in the 1960s around the time he formed the Church of Satan.  It was from this book that the Church got the Baphomet symbol now associated with the Church and modern Satanism in general.  The book even appears in some early publicity photos for the Church of Satan, as under the dustjacket, printed in white on the black cover of the book is the symbol, making for a rat...

 After writing his very successful black magic-themed novel, The Devil Rides Out , Dennis Wheatley was asked by publishers to pen a reference book about the occult and black magic.  Wheatley advised that he did not feel he was up to that challenge, at least not at that time.  While Wheatley would eventually write such a book, he would not do so for multiple decades, when he published The Devil and All His Works in 1971.  However, back in the 1930s, when he was originally approached to write a nonfiction book about the occult, he recommended they go with a man named Rollo Ahmed. A more recent paperback edition of The Black Art Ahmed was an occultist who had also instructed Wheatley and his wife in some of the basics of yoga (not the modern stretching-in-tight-pants fad that goes by the name of yoga).  The result of this was a book called The Black Art , first published in 1936.  Wheatley also authored an introduction for the book, which, to my knowledge, h...

The Occult Experience is an Australian documentary from 1985.  There is also a companion book with the same title by Nevill Drury, who is also the co-author of the film's narration.  The film covers various modern-day religious groups from Wiccan groups to shamanism to Satanic groups to fringe Christian groups. Front cover of the VHS edition Front cover of the book Back in the days of video rental stores, The Occult Experience was a fairly common title to find.  I seem to remember finding it in the horror section, of all places, but that was likely just a misinformed video store employee's decision.  The cover is quite striking and not surprisingly so, as it features a piece by the late H.R. Giger.  Giger himself is also featured in the film, close to the end.  It was released on VHS and Laserdisc, although I do not know if it was ever released on other formats.  From what I can tell, it does not seem to have been released on DVD or Blu-ray, at least...

While primarily known for sci-fi stories, including various Star Trek stories, James Blish also wrote one of the greatest works of occult fiction: Black Easter.  From what I have read, Blish developed the idea for Black Easter by deciding to write something where magic is definitely real and works just as it is supposed to, but using only magical tomes that really exist, rather than any invented ones, such as The Necronomicon . Paperback edition by Dell The story is quite simple, but also rather fascinating.  It revolves around a practitioner of magic, Theron Ware, who performs various rituals for hire.  He is approached by an arms dealer who wants to try something of an experiment.  After Ware performs some smaller feats for him, convincing him of the efficacy of magic, the arms dealer says he wants to free all the demons of hell for one night.  Ware finds that he is actually quite interested in this idea, so he agrees. The bulk of the story deals with Ware p...

As the idea for this blog came from a Dennis Wheatley project, it is only fitting that I start with a Dennis Wheatley novel.  This was the first of his books that I ever read.  I found a paperback of it along with another of his books, The Ka of Gifford Hillary , at a local chain used book shop.  The name Dennis Wheatley jumped out at me, although I couldn't recall why I knew that name, so I picked up both books.  When I looked inside the books, where there was a list of other Dennis Wheatley titles published by the same company, I began to understand why the name was familiar to me-- I saw the titles The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil-- a Daughter .  I also realized that I had read his name in connection with the band Black Sabbath in articles citing his black magic novels as an influence on the band's lyrics.  Many years later now, I have picked up and read a great number of his books. 1960s era paperback edition from Arrow, featuring some excellent co...

The idea for this blog stems from a series of paperback reprints released in the 1970s by Sphere Books.  This was a series curated by British author Dennis Wheatley, who had gained quite a reputation for writing stories about black magic and the occult, although this really only comprised a small percentage of his writings. The volumes in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult were selected by Wheatley himself, each featuring an introduction by him.  Wheatley chose titles from both fiction and non-fiction.  Topics ranged from werewolves and vampires to palmistry and voodoo.  I decided it would be an interesting thing to do something similar of my own.  What I intend to do with this blog is to write pieces on various titles, including not just books, but also movies.  I will cover both fiction and non-fiction and the selections I choose will not be confined to one particular viewpoint.  I will have the first piece posted soon.  For any who are ...