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

  The Exorcist was undeniably a big part of popular culture in the 1970s, both the novel and the film, which were each written by William Peter Blatty.  The novel, released in 1971, went through a multitude of printings and remains readily available today.  The 1973 film version was followed by various knock-offs, some good, but more which were rather bad.  The impact of The Exorcist carried on past the '70s, with references popping up in movies and TV shows and songs by bands, such as Possessed with its song, "The Exorcist", from the 1985 album, Seven Churches .  The film has had two sequels and two prequels, plus a television series more recently.  Blatty also wrote a sequel novel, Legion , and ended up directing the film version as Exorcist III . Paperback edition of the novel, from around the time of the film's release For anybody who is not already aware, The Exorcist tells the story of a young girl who seems to be possessed.  After exhausting a...

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...

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...