There are plenty of lists of the standard canon of great books readily available elsewhere online. This present list, admittedly idiosyncretic, is specifically for those seeking to cultivate an out of phase sensibility or those who might care to know more about the peculiar interests and background of the present author.
The chosen works are not ranked in any particular order. Nothing should be inferred by the order in which they are listed.
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BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Anything by Mr. Coleridge, one of the greatest minds of the XIXth century, is worthy of dedicated attention. His poems - the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight, etcetera, are themselves masterworks of English literature, but his criticism and philosophical works are equally important. The essay on method and his account of imagination and fancy should be regarded as essential reading.
QUEEN OF THE AIR - John Ruskin
In this beautiful and graceful interlude into Greek mythology, Mr. Ruskin gives a penetrating account of the goddess Athena as a goddess of atmosphere and draws relevant conclusions regarding architecture and the arts. A neglected treasure of XIXth aesthetic philosophy.
GEORGE SALE'S KORAN
There are now dozens of attempts to translate the Holy Writ of the Mahometans into the English tongue. The earliest, and still the best, is that of George Sales. Marmaduke Pickthall's rendering deserves an honourable mention too, but nothing quite captures an appropriate English as does the rendering of Mr Sales. His Preliminary Discourse is also a very worthy introduction to Mahometan religion. Ignore the translations favored by the Muslims themselves along with their whining about 'colonialism' and their endless quibbles about the supposed subtlety of the Arabic original. For most purposes stick with Sales.
THE TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY - Fawn M. Brodie
This is a beautifully written, sensitive but critical biography of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. The author of this present journal - let it be known - has, as a student of religion, an enduring interest in Mormonism, and Miss Brodie's biography of Mr Smith is seminal reading for anyone who shares that interest. Among biographies of any sort it is outstanding. Highly recommended.
GEMATRIA - Bligh Bond and Lea
Sub-titled 'A Preliminary Investigation of the Cabala' this is a curious but fascinating study of the alphanumeric patterns of the Greek New Testament and associated early Christian texts. Occidental occultism is littered with works on the Hebrew Qabbalah; this was a pioneering study of the Christian equivalent written from within a strangely theosophical Anglican milieu in the early XXth century.
Underpinning the poetic works of Mr. Yeats - one of the greatest of modern poets in the English language - is a complex mythopoeic system of astrological visions which he revealed in this work, A Vision. The seer was Mr. Yeats' wife who was gifted in the art of automatic writing. Mr. Yeats collated and interpreted his wife's visions as referring to various cycles within the Platonic Year. A fascinating book of arcane occult chronology.
A VISION - W. B. Yeats
Underpinning the poetic works of Mr. Yeats - one of the greatest of modern poets in the English language - is a complex mythopoeic system of astrological visions which he revealed in this work, A Vision. The seer was Mr. Yeats' wife who was gifted in the art of automatic writing. Mr. Yeats collated and interpreted his wife's visions as referring to various cycles within the Platonic Year. A fascinating book of arcane occult chronology.
FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS - D. H. Lawrence
No doubt stirred as he was by Freud, D. H. Lawrence wrote this extraordinary account of the living, pulsating human cosmology as a tour de force quite outside of his novels and went far beyond Freud. It is a great pity that he is now coloured by the Baby Boomer's obsessions with Lady Chatterly. Lawrence is in his own passionate way, in fact, a great voice for tradition and an anti-modernist. These eccentric essays are a good introduction to a very different side to Mr Lawrence's genius. It is an assault upon the mechanical cosmos of Newton. Read it attentively and your view of reality will change forever.
KANGAROO - D. H. Lawrence
What is extraordinary here is that Mr. Lawrence spent only a brief period in New South Wales yet in that time managed to write what is arguably one of the few profound accounts of the Australian land by any writer to date. Kangaroo - the story of a nascent right-wing movement in Sydney Town - is not a great novel by any means, but it is unique and fascinating for all of that. The question of the extent to which it is based on real persons remains controversial. It is one of Lawrence's most political works and displays his deep anti-socialist leanings. More readers with right-wing sympatheties should be acquainted with this work.
THE BOOK OF DEEDS OF ARMS & OF CHIVALRY - Christine de Pizan
One does not expect a woman to write the definitive text on chivalrous medieval warfare. Christine de Pizan, writing around 1410, provides a fascinating discussion of the Just War amidst technical reports and accounts of proper manly conduct in deeds of arms. Give war a chance.
LATTER-DAY PAMPLETS - Thomas Carlyle
Carlyle was one of the most widely read and influential writers in English in the XIXth century. Today he is much neglected, except among neoreactionaries for whom he has become a latter-day hero. And rightly so. Written in the curly Carlylean prose, these essays - pamplets - represent a profound assault upon the philosophical assumptions of progressive liberalism. This is probably the best place to start with Carlyle. Truly out of phase reading. Recommended.
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND - Lewis Carrol
First published in 1865, a classic of Victoriana and ever-popular, a work so exactly at the intersection of logic and imagination that it is an indispensible inclusion in any personal library. It needs no justification except that the playfulness of nonsense has disappeared from modern literature.
THE GREAT TRIAD - Rene Guenon
The pneumatic mind of the Vedantist Monsieur Guenon here turns to the Far Eastern tradition. 'The Great Triad' is Rene Guenon's magisterial account of the Toaist/Confucianist spiritual complex, its metaphysics, cosmology and symbolism. Accordingly, this is one of the best, most penetrating (and thankfully least sociological) works on the Chinese tradition in any European language, written with Guenon's characteristic clarity and precision of terminology.
CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE - trans. Robert Van Gulik
Chinese detective stories featuring the celebrated Judge Dee beautifully reconstructed by the Dutchman Van Gulik with some excellent line drawing illustrations. The Chinese literary corpus is rich in detective tales. Judge Dee is the Chinese Sherlock Holmes. As well as being entertaining as mysteries, these stories offer useful insights into traditional Chinese customs and the Chinese mind.
TIMAEUS & CRITIAS - Plato
Needless to say, the entire corpus of Platonic dialogues is of consummate value - one cannot read enough of Plato. These days, though, contemporary obsessions with "ethics" tend to steer us away from works not of that flavor. The Timaeus is Plato's major work on cosmology. It has been described as responsible for more intellectual evil than any work in the Western canon other than the Revelation of St. John. A resounding recommendation. In the companion volume, Critias, we find the story of Atlantis the lost continent.
THE GOSPEL OF BARNABAS - trans. L & L Ragg
One of the strangest works of Christian apocrypha, this late medieval/early modern work of uncertain provenance is infamous as the so-called 'Muslim gospel'. It is a medieval gospel harmony - under Carmelite influence - posing as an ancient work by the apostle Barnabas and reconfigured to suit Mahometan expectations. Nefariously, Mahometans routinely cite it as the 'true gospel' of Jesus. The present writer studied its text and context for over a decade and is the author of numerous articles on the subject.
LEVIATHAN - Thomas Hobbes
Reflections on the English civil war and one of essential texts of political philosophy. Its chief value is that Mr. Hobbes - contra the Rousseauean worldview - proposes that the state of nature is brutish; he is an advocate for law, order, tradition and the values of civilization. In his own context, he concludes that only a strong sovereign ruler can prevent the chaos of civil strife. In this life one is either a Hobbsean or a Rousseauean - for the proto-hippie Rousseau, human nature is essentially good and it is civilization that corrupts; for Hobbes civilization is good and nature is dog-eat-dog. The present author is an avowed Hobbsean by temperament and so 'Leviathan' finds a place among his essential books.
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF SAKI
THE BOOK OF TEA - Kakuzo Okakura
In this charming work from 1906, a long essay written in English for occidental readers, Mr. Okakura outlines his philosophy of 'Teaism' and explains its place in the Oriental world. This is one of numerous books to qualify as a classic of tea culture. In a brash, wide-eyed era of endemic coffee drinking, this paean to the contemplative beauty of tea is certainly out of phase.
SACRED ART IN EAST & WEST - Titus Burckhardt
SARTOR RESARTUS - Thomas Carlyle
Borges read this 1836 philosophical novel when he was sixteen and was, by his own account "overwhelmed" by it. The present writer tried reading it when he was seventeen and could only manage to make it through a few pages. He has since tried again. It is a difficult and complex text, but far more worth the effort than James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which is, it seems, based upon it. This is one of the neglected master works of XIXth century philosophical fiction.
SCHOLIA ON AN IMPLICIT TEXT - Nicolas Gomez-Davila
The erudite South American reactionary, Senor Gomez-Davila, declined to write books; instead he composed aphorisms as "scholia on an implied text". His aphorisms are now gems of modern Neoreaction. He was reluctant to publish them, except in limited editions for his friends, and they remain not as widely read as they deserve to be. This volume is the main collection. Although aphoristic, a coherent philosophy emerges. A book to be read and contemplated again and again. An important work.
PERFORMANCE IN THE GARDEN - Alan Chadwick
Alan Chadwick, the aristocratic English Master gardener, had the rare distinction to have had Rudolf Steiner as his personal tutor as a boy. It made a lasting impression. He pursued a career as a Shakespearean actor but late in life found a calling in gardening. This is a collection of transcripts of his lectures to apprentice horticulturalists in the United States. Brash, flambouyant, irrascible, dramatic, terribly eccentric, and expounding his unique alchemical cosmology in a unique idiom, Mr. Chadwick was an artist who painted with the living flora of plants. These lectures, grouped around the idea of the garden as a theatre, are a treasure. We are fortunate to have them.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES - Richard M. Weaver
Published in 1948, a true philosophical classic of American conservativism, although most of what Mr. Weaver has to say is readily extrapolated to a wider context than modern America. This book is rightly regarded as Robert Nisbert put it, as "one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition." Weaver traces the decline of the West to the corrosive influence of nominalism in the Middle Ages, a view that the writer of these pages shares, which largely explains why it finds a place in this list.
SHE - H. Rider Haggard
A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY - Jorge Luis Borges
This volume presents fictionalized biographical tales of actual criminals in the typical style of Borges' pseudo-academic short stories, or rather "fictions" as he preferred to call them. It is regarded as the pioneering work of so-called "magic realism" although Senor Borges himself dismissed the stories as empty exercises in baroque intellectualism. The present writer is himself a Borges enthusiast, mostly for the Borgesean penchant for parodying academic pretensions. This is a wonderful collection of stories.
THE CITY & MAN - Leo Strauss
Although led astray by Nietzche to a ridiculous misreading of Plato, Leo Strauss at least reconnected political science with ancient philosophy. The City & Man is his major work and an important work in modern conservative political theory. Although almost always wrong on all major conclusions, Mr. Strauss is almost always arrestingly insightful on minor points, this born of his meticulous reading of the Platonic texts and thus a valuable lesson for all readers of Plato. No student of Plato should ignore the Straussian construction.
THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
This is a book to be cherished. Drawing upon and paraphrasing Dionysius the Areopagite, this is a classic of medieval Christian mysticism, establishing the (Neoplatonic) via negativa in a Christian context. One of the most profound books in the Christian tradition and essential reading for that reason.
REIGN OF QUANITY - Rene Guenon
No work is quite so thoroughly out of phase as Rene Guenon's 'Reign of Quantity'. Scandalously, it was out of print as well as out of phase for over thirty years. This is Monsieur Guenon's scathing indictment of modernity, an unparalleled clinical dissection of the modern imposture. 'The Reign of Quantity' is essential reading as Guenon demolishes the shiboliths of modernity one by one. In a book brimming with fascinating chapters, the chapter on the degradation of coinage always catches this reader's attention. Essential.
Mr. Lasch presents a devastating diagnosis of the narcissistic pathology of American liberalism. This is a damning critique of American post-war decadence, and by extension Western liberalism as a whole. The Baby Boomer project ends in the fetid tragic-comic excesses of self-love. Lasch dissects the culture of therapy. The chapter on the degradation of sport is especially insightful. This is a compelling work of conservative cultural sociology. Arguably, the rot is far more advanced now than when Lasch wrote this study.
THE HEBRAIC TONGUE RESTORED - Fabre d'Olivet
Monsieur d'Olivet supposed, wrongly, that Hebrew was the archiac tongue of the Egyptian priests and the key to the Egyptian mysteries. Published in 1767, it is a work that proposes that the Hebrew tongue has great mystic powers and occult significances. It elevates the language of the Bible to a special status. As such, it had a profound impact upon the French occult revival and its other European offshoots in the nineteenth century. It championed the notion that the “Hebraic Tongue” is an esoteric language of extraordinary cosmic, occult and metaphysical power. The book purports to investigate the very roots of the language. An eccentric, influential, if miscalculated, work of linguistics.
REIGN OF QUANITY - Rene Guenon
No work is quite so thoroughly out of phase as Rene Guenon's 'Reign of Quantity'. Scandalously, it was out of print as well as out of phase for over thirty years. This is Monsieur Guenon's scathing indictment of modernity, an unparalleled clinical dissection of the modern imposture. 'The Reign of Quantity' is essential reading as Guenon demolishes the shiboliths of modernity one by one. In a book brimming with fascinating chapters, the chapter on the degradation of coinage always catches this reader's attention. Essential.
THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM - Christopher Lasch
INDIAN TALES - Rudyard Kipling
In an age when all colonial writing - or just writing by white Anglo males - is viewed with grave suspicion, the beloved stories of Mr. Kipling must be deemed out of phase. India through (sympathetic) colonial eyes. Not all Nobel Prize for Literature winners are deserving - Tagore, for instance - but Kipling is assuredly a great writer. This collection covers most of the best tales.
THE NUPTIAL NUMBER OF PLATO - James Adam
James Adam sets out to solve the most intractable mathematical conundrum in the Platonic corpus, painstakingly unravelling the mysteries of the so-called 'Nuptial Number' described in the Republic. He explains much more along the way. A great example of careful scholarship matched with creative inference. The groundwork of Mr. Adam's study might be expanded in many directions.
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN - Hergé
Loathed by Leftists, the politically incorrect adventures of the red-headed boy reporter in remote colonial contexts are the most popular comic books of the XXth century. It is the disjunction of immense popularity and political disapproval that makes the 'Adventures of Tintin' so deliciously out of phase. Monsieur Hergé wrote twenty-four albums of Tintin comics. Light reading, certainly, although numerous volumes of literary criticism, especially among French academics, explore the serious themes concealed behind Hergé's clean line drawings and carefully constructed plots. The novelist Tom McCarthy has compared them to Aeschylus.
This is a very fine collection of essays on agrarian themes by the American philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry. Sane and sagacious, with a beautiful sense of place and an unfailing discernment between a genuine, traditional conservationism founded in notions of deep husbandry as opposed to the frantic, alienated ecology of Leftist activism, Mr. Berry is always worth reading. Fresh and earthy.
THE ART OF THE COMMONPLACE - Wendell Berry
THE PERFUMED GARDEN OF CHEIKH NEZAOUI - Sir Richard Burton
Burton's translation of this infamous Mahometan erotic manual. It is a much lovelier book than the Kama Sutra, it must be said. It is probably the most explicit but authentic evocation of oriental erotica translated into English in the Victorian era. The sensuality of the Orient exposed. Among erotic manuals it is the one most worth reading.
Mr. Campbell had a bad stammer and was treated as a dunce at school. Ignored and sitting at the back of the class he taught himself Spanish, French and Latin and by the time he was an adult he had mastered over forty languages and could converse in twenty others. Now acknowledged as one of the foremost polyglots of all time. This text is compiled from his extensive notes. Not especially out of phase but an essential work of reference and an important work in the library of any man who finds it impossible to learn languages.
THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS
Hated by the Maoists - a recommendation in itself - sagacious old Confucius represents the best in the Chinese tradition. The deep and abiding influence of Confucianism in forming strong civic virtues is palpable throughout East Asia. Beyond that, though, the civilizing mission of Confucianism has universal reach. There is everything to be learnt from Confucius today. Taoism is more popular. Confucianism is more important. The Analects are at the heart of Confucian literature.
COMPENDIUM OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES - George Law Campbell
THE JOURNEY TO THE WEST
The Chinese classic of magic and adventure and a key text in both theme and iconography in the Chinese religious tradition. Under divine command, a group of characters set out for India (or Tibet) in a quest to bring the sacred books of Boodhism to the Middle Kingdom. A Chinese work that bridges China and India, the two mother cultures of the Orient.
THE EVERLASTING MAN - G. K. Chesterton
Chesterton, the prince of paradox, forges a lively apology for the Christian worldview in this work, taking particular aim at the corrosive ideology of evolutionism and Darwinism that was high intellectual fashion in the early XXth century. Read all the Chesteron you like - it is all worthwhile. No one has the same sense of the ways in which modernity has inverted simple truths. 'The Everlasting Man' is a key work. One does not need to be a Christian to find it absorbing.
THE GODS OF THE EGYPTIANS - E. Wallis Budge
It seems Wallis Budge is somewhat out of favor these days: someone discovered that he was prone to Victorian prudishness and let it impinge upon his accounts of Egyptian mythology. The present author, however, once owned a two volume set of 'The Gods of the Egyptians' and poured over them, delighted by the scholar's early XXth egyptological obsessions. This work reflects the excitement of the Edwardian's Tutenkamen age. An essential reference work of the old school, along with Mr. Wallis Budge's 'Egyptian Book of the Dead'.
ASTRONOMICA - Manilius
Not much loved by Latin purists because of its rather second-rate literary qualities compared to, say, Virgil, this epic treatise in verse relates one of the fullest accounts of ancient astrological lore extant. No one is quite sure where the poet attained this lore, nor how much of it might be his own invention, nor the degree to which it reflects actual Roman astrological practice, but it is nevertheless a goldmine for modern students of astrology. It is especially rich in its account of zodiacal symbolism. Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos' is better known and more influential in the subsequent astrological traditions of Christendom and Islam: Manilius deserves more readers.
THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE - Sigmund Freud
When is a cigar just a cigar? The thing about Herr Freud is that he was, if nothing else, a beautiful writer. Much of Freud is worth reading and indeed a pleasure to read. This classic work is an account of how the primitive unconscious intrudes into civilized manners when one least expects it. The Freudian slip. Soft cock liberals are all Jungians these days. Rediscover Freud.
THE GOLDEN LEGEND - Jacobus de Voragine
The lives of the saints. This work was enormously popular and thus also influential in the Christian Middle Ages, sometimes even more widely read than the Bible. It is very difficult to make sense of traditional Christian art and iconography without a good knowledge of the tales told in the 'Golden Legend'. It is a personal favorite of the present writer, a treasury of miraculous and strange tales. Not to be overlooked.
THE GOLDEN LEGEND - Jacobus de Voragine
FUNDAMENTAL SYMBOLS - Rene Guenon
This is a posthumous anthology of essays and articles on various symbols and orders of symbolism arranged according to theme. It makes an excellent reference work. Guenon's understanding of traditional symbols, perfectly free of modern theories, is unsurpassed. This is one of the most accessible collections of Guenon's writings.
AGRICULTURE - Rudolf Steiner
Dr. Steiner reluctantly agreed to give a few lectures to some German farmers in the early 1920s. This was the beginning of so-called 'biodyamic agriculture', an esoteric form of organic farming. Transcripts of the lectures, along with Herr Steiner's remarkable blackboard drawings, are published in this volume and now constitute a seminal text in modern Goethean cosmology. These lectures will reshape your worldview from the mineral realm to the farthest stars. Here is an entirely new way to view nature. There is almost no theosophical influence in these lectures: this is Rudolf Steiner, boy genius of the romantic scientific tradition, at his best.
THE GREEK MYTHS - Robert Graves
Robert Graves made the definitive collection of Greek myths in the English language, complete with references to the original sources, and in so doing has done a great service to writers, teachers, students, religionists and intellectuals. Regrettably, he went and ruined this good work by infusing it with his own weird quasi-feminist theories about early Greek matriarchy. One can ignore this and focus on the myths. This work, often presented in two volumes, is an indispensible resource.
DIANETICS - L. Ron Hubbard
Before he padded it out into the more profitable ensemble of Scientology, there was dianetics, the so-called 'modern science of mental health', Mr. Hubbard's practical guide to human psychology. It was a huge bestseller for a good reason; it is insightful, fresh, unique and extremely well written. Hubbard is a surprisingly good writer. The way in which the mainstream media (on behalf of the psychiatric establishment) relentlessly lampoon and demonize the Hubbard movement makes reading Hubbard an act of cultural rebellion, out of phase reading certainly. (William Burroughs, the wayward son of the pharmacuetical empire, was a Hubbard fan, remember.) L. Ron takes on the mental health industry. Dianetics is his key book. Allow yourself to be impressed by Hubbard's sheer verve.
As always, the loudmouthed Michael Muhammad Knight - the progenitor of 'Muslim punk' - treads fearlessly where others are afraid to go. This is a revealing work that fills an obvious gap in the typical literature. The connections between Mahometanism and the occult are everywhere to be seen and yet the topic remains curiously unexplored. Mr. Knight lets the genie out of the bottle. A useful contribution to an important area of study. Readers will note that the writer of these web pages has corresponding interests: there is a natural overlap between neo-orientalism and matters occult and magickal.
MAGIC IN ISLAM - Michael Muhammad Knight
THE BUGBEAR OF LITERACY - A. K. Coomaraswamy
Dense annotated essays by Ananada Kentish Coomaraswamy with the title essay presenting the classic critique of the evils of universal literacy. Most of Mr. Coomaraswamy is concerned with the traditions of Hindoo and Oriental art, a subject about which he is unsurpassed; this volume is more concerned with his social philosophy. For the present writer, the stand-out essay is 'Spiritual Paternity and the Puppet Complex'. As with all AKC, many of the real gems are hidden in his copious footnotes.
MOBY DICK - Herman Melville
This whale-sized encyclopedic novel ranks in any 'Great Books' list but it earns a place here due to the themes announced in its opening sentence: "Call me Ishmael." One wonders how many people have actually read and how many have actually understood Melville's strange, wordy, mythic, allegorical masterpiece? The novel as a totalizing microcosm. Buy the edition with Rockwell Kent's illustrations. 
THE SERMONS OF MEISTER ECKHART
Only slightly on the right side of orthodoxy, the Dominican friar Meister Eckhart stretches Catholic mysticism as far towards a Platonic understanding as it will go. In his time people would walk dozens of miles to hear the Meister's sermons. He was condemned by Church authorities on numerous points and reluctantly recanted. Readers will find a different style of Christianity - informed by Dominican realism - in these outstanding sermons.
The original tea classic from the Tang Dynasty. The author, Lu Yu, very sensibly refused to become a Boodhist monk and instead joined a circus for a career as a clown. Later in life, self-educated through long association with poets and calligraphers and other literati, he retired into solitude and wrote the definitive work on the spiritual mysteries of tea. His guiding philosophy - essentially oriental - is that the universal can be found in the particular; tea, tea-drinking, tea-preparation, tea-ritual is a key to heaven. A delightful book. A true classic - a spiritual work - of the Chinese tradition.
THE CLASSIC OF TEA - Lu Yu
NOTES TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF CULTURE - T.S. Eliot
Mr. Eliot is, of course, a giant of XXth century literature and requires no introduction. As with other works listed here, though, it is his social philosophy rather than his poetry that constitutes out of phase reading. His 'Notes Towards a Definition of Culture'is a foundational work of modern Anglo-American conservativism. Indispensable reading for anyone outside of the pervasive Leftist liberal orthodoxy of our times. By all means read the poems, especially 'The Wasteland' and 'Four Quartets', but also read 'Notes Towards a Definition of Culture'.
THE BOW OF ULYSSES - James Anthony Froude
Mr. Froude provides detailed and cogently written accounts of the British colonial experience and is essential reading if one hopes to rise above the deep-rooted assumptions of Marxist anti-colonial ideology. The 'Bow of Ulysses' concerns the English in the West Indies. Very engaging travel writings that present a generally positive view of the British Empire. Required reading.
OCEANA - James Anthony Froude
Mr. Froude's travels to Australia and the Pacific. Once again, insightful and out of phase accounts of the workings of the British Empire. All of Froude is worth reading, actually. This work is not as well known as the 'Bow of Ulysses' but is of greater interest to the present writer, being himself an Australian. A further innoculation against anti-colonial ideology.
ALL & EVERYTHING - George Gurdjieff
Billed as ten books in three series, but constituting a single work, by the mysterious Mr. G. By any estimation, fair or foul, Gurdjieff is a compelling figure of the XXth century. Reading Gurdjieff will shake you up. 'All & Everything' includes 'Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson' - a cure to all pernicious intellectual habititudes - the semi-autobiographical 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' and the more philosophical 'Life is Only Real Then, When I Am'. This is the foundation text of 'The Work' of self-transformation as Gurdjieff conceived it. It is not written to be entertaining; it is written to turn you inside out.
HYPNEROTMOACHIA POLIPHILI
The most mysterious 'Dream of Poliphilus', an arcane allegory of love, first published in 1499. This is one of numerous stranfe works attributed to members of the illustrious Colonna family. The hero Poliphilo pursues the lovely Polia through a landscape of dreams, and is at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus, or so it appears. Renaissance allegory.
HYPNEROTMOACHIA POLIPHILI
The most mysterious 'Dream of Poliphilus', an arcane allegory of love, first published in 1499. This is one of numerous stranfe works attributed to members of the illustrious Colonna family. The hero Poliphilo pursues the lovely Polia through a landscape of dreams, and is at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus, or so it appears. Renaissance allegory.
THE BOOK OF ENOCH
Among the best and most seminal of the Old Testament pseudepigraphica, the visionary Book of Enoch - First Enoch - concerns the Biblical Enoch who "walked with God" and therefore is party to the divine secrets. It almost found a place in the Biblical canon. St. Paul quotes it as scripture. Instead, it became a fountainhead of sundry underground religious currents in the wider Judeo-Christian tradition and is important reading on that account.
MEDIEVAL NUMBER SYMBOLISM - Vincent Foster Hopper
In the modern order number has been reduced to quantity, but number is quality first, and this was the guiding reality underpinning the symbolism of number in the Middle Ages. This useful book helps the modern reader to appreciate another way of thinking about number which in turn is an essential step in forming a proper view of the medieval world and shaking off the limitations of the modern farago. Like several works in this list, an antidote to modernist anti-medievalism.
THE THEOTERIC ARITHMETIC OF THE PYTHAGOREANS - Thomas Taylor
The medieval world of number was essentially an extension of the Pythagorean view from the ancient world. It is the modern conception of number that is decadent. This work by Thomas Taylor - one of the truly great Englishman of all time - is like a workbook of exercises. Going through it step by step is a process of intellectual transformation. A wonderous work among arithmetic books.
Monsieur Louys was a poet and writer famed for his explicit pagan erotica composed in the highest, most refined style of beautiful French prose. This is his first and arguably best work, decadent in its blending of sensual excess and delicate perfection. Sub-titled 'Ancient Manners' it is the sumptuous tale of courtesan life in ancient Alexandria. It was the best selling French book of its day. Few works reveal this aspect of antiquity with quite so much refinement and unusual beauty. It is a paean to the goddess herself.
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF PLANTS - Goethe
In this short, elegant work Goethe demonstrates his method of imaginative science through an exploration of the metamorphosis of plants, deviations from the archetypal ur-plant. This is a little treasure within Goethe's scientific writings and an especially accessible work for those who want to grasp the Goethean method. Another way of looking at nature outside of the dominant scientific paradigms. Many of the works that are included in this present list have their origins in this pamphlet by Herr Goethe.
APHRODITE - Pierre Louys
THE PHILOSOPHY & WRITINGS OF PLATO - Thomas Taylor
There are dozens of introductions to Plato, but few are written with the conviction of Mr. Taylor the English Platonist. Anything by Taylor is worth reading. This is a good place to begin, and is a good lens through which to view Platonic philosophy in general. Much maligned during his own era - always a sign that one is out of phase - Taylor understands Plato better than any other modern English writer.
COLLECTED POEMS - Dylan Thomas
This famous collection of poems from the mid-century Welsh bard, Dylan Thomas, finds a place on this list for one reason: as someone said about these poems, they "disturb the roots of the English language." In structure and theme they are, in fact, surprisingly traditional, but in idiom they are unique, dense, cryptic and lyrical. Mr. Thomas had a very small vocabulary of basic, concrete words (mostly simple nouns). What he did with them was extraordinary. Let the roots of your English be disturbed.
FOR LUST OF KNOWING - Robert Irwin
The author of this present journal counts himself a neo-orientalist and a sympathetic student of the orientalist project. This recent work by Robert Irwin is important to him as a detailed history of orientalism but even more as a savage, decisive attack upon the disgraceful misrepresentations of that phony Edward Said that have unfortunately become a standard fixture in liberal anti-colonial intellectuality. This book, subtitled 'The Orientalists & Their Enemies' is the ultimate anti-Said book. Bravo. Anyone who has had a general education in the humanities in the West in the last forty years is almost certainly infected with Mr. Said's poison. This book by Mr. Irwin is the cure. Read it twice.
NECRONOMICON - H. P. Lovecraft
Mr. Lovecraft, the American master of horror, is a true literary misfit. The themes of his stories were radically out of phase in his own time and remain so today. But they are beautifully written, with a faultless sense of what it is that chills the human soul. The present writer read Lovecraft in his teens; nothing removes one from the common concerns of one's own age like H. P. Lovecraft. This edition, Necronomicon - the Book of Dead Names, an instance of orientalist occultism, let us note, - has all the best stories in one volume. Hours of reading.
MEN AMONG THE RUINS - Baron Julius Evola
SPIRITUAL BODY & CELESTIAL EARTH - Henri Corbin
Monsieur Corbin explicates the arcane doctrines of Persian theosophy from ancient Zoroastrian times through to the esoteric schools of Shia Islam. This is an essential study of the 'imaginal' path - the via imaginativa - that Corbin discovered at the heart of eastern Illuminationist Platonism. Here is an entire tradition completely neglected by other supposed experts of oriental religion. Corbin comes as a revelation.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT - Sir Henry Sumner Maine
By "popular" government Sir Henry means "democracy" and his purpose in these four essays is to disabuse his Victorian readership of the purile notion that democracy and progress are one and the same thing. These are incisive essays that undermine our most unquestioned democratic assumptions. Good reading if you still think democracy is what the whole of human history has been struggling towards all these centuries.
ESSENCE & ALCHEMY - Mandy Aftel
Arguably the best available history of perfumery, especially in that it gives some acknowledgement to the role of the alchemical arts in that history. Regrettably, the history of perfumes and a full account of perfumes in the subtle life of man (and woman) is an area still under-explored. The writer of these web pages is always searching for decent accounts of such an history; Mandy Aftel's book is the best he can find and so it finds a place in his library. This is a work full of wonderful tales about perfumes and strange aromatics. For all of that, it lacks the deeper dimension of the spirituality of perfumes and still tends to look at the subject through a modern lens . A good starting point, fascinating, wide-ranging, nicely written, if incomplete.
We now know that Jung's 'Seven Sermons of the Dead' is a section of his famed 'Red Book', but it was first published independently. The present writer acquired a copy at a young age and at first mistakenly assumed it to be a translation of an ancient text. The gnostic Jung. Much of Jung is rubbish, to be frank, but this is inspired.
THE SEVEN SERMONS OF THE DEAD - C. G. Jung
We now know that Jung's 'Seven Sermons of the Dead' is a section of his famed 'Red Book', but it was first published independently. The present writer acquired a copy at a young age and at first mistakenly assumed it to be a translation of an ancient text. The gnostic Jung. Much of Jung is rubbish, to be frank, but this is inspired.
JOSEPHUS
Events in Judea in the first century of the Christian era have shaped and defined both the Roman/European as well as Mahometan civilizations. Josephus was an eye-witness to some of the most crucial and epoch-making events of those times. His 'Jewish War' and 'Antiquities of the Jews' provide essential background to what took shape as the Judeo-Christian (and later Islmo-) tradition. These are official Roman publications, written with the aid of an extensive staff and access to Roman records. It is remarkable that they have survived the tumult of that period. Anyone who has read the Gospels and the Hebrew Scriptures without also reading Josephus only knows half the story. Whiston's translation.
THE FORGE & THE CRUCIBLE - Mircea Eliade
There are many worthy works by Mircea Eliade, one of the fathers of the phenomenological study of human religious experience. 'The Forge & the Crucible' concerns alchemical traditions, east and west, and in this must count as one of the best books on alchemy extant. Read the influential 'Sacred and the Profane' first, perhaps, in order to get a sense of the shape of Eliade's thinking, but for an intelligent work on alchemy - the present writer being very fond of the alchemical traditions - this is required reading.
YOGA: IMMORTALITY & FREEDOM - Mircea Eliade
As a young man Mircea Eliade journeyed to India seeking enlightenment. Unlike everyone else of his generation, though, he was not interested in the monism of Advaita Vedanta but rather the dualist traditions of Samkya Yoga. He did not find enlightenment in India (he found love and romance) but he did manage to write the greatest account of yoga in any European language, 'Yoga: Freedom & Immortality'. Had he only written this, he would have earned a place as one of the great religious scholars of our era. This is a work of genius. The work on yoga. Remarkably, it is entirely neglected in post-colonial India - the contemporary Hindoo will not admit that a European could write a much better book than any of the native swamis - and in this is out of phase.
EIGHT LECTURES ON YOGA - Aleister Crowley
The saving grace of Aleister Crowley was an enduring capacity for self-parody. It is hard to know when to take him seriously. These lectures on yoga illustrate his sense of humour, his self-mockery, but also, amidst the fun, something of his synthetic religious genius that he worked into a self-engradizing system uniting eastern and western occult elements. This is what the present writer finds interesting. Mr. Crowley is surely one of the most colorful characters of the XXth century, albeit a complete psychopath. This type of work is a gentle introduction to who and what he was in his better guises. Yoga for Yellowbellies.
TEMPLE & CONTEMPLATION - Henri Corbin
A further collection of essays by Monsieur Corbin on the theme of the contemplative purpose of the temple - the temple as the platform of spiritual vision. He opens fresh perspectives on a range of otherwise neglected spiritual traditions. Until one reads Corbin one is unlikely to have a sound appreciation of Shi'ism. Importantly, he does the same for the Grail traditions in Europe. The spirituality of the imagination is his theme. Strongly recommended.
THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN & HELL - William Blake
The great visionary poetry of Mr. Blake has no equal in the English language. His literary powers grew greater as he aged. 'The Marriage of Heaven & Hell' is a work of his maturity and embodies his strongly alchemico-Hermetic doctrine of the union of opposites. It is a wonder that Henri Corbin chose to valorize Swedenborg but overlooked the imaginal powers of William Blake.
ORIENTALIST JONES - Michael J. Franklin
A marvellous biography of the intrepid scholar Sir William Jones, Sanskrit linguist and one of the founders of the Royal Asiatic Society. The present author recently visited the tomb of Mr. Jones in the eerie Park Road South Cemetery in Calcutta. There is now a small industry among post-colonial academics devoted to slandering Jones and belittling his accomplishments. This fine biography gives a proper reckoning of what a remarkable figure he was.
A MODERN HERBAL - Mrs Grieve
Leaving aside the herbal aspect of this herbal - although noting that it remains the best work in that genre in the English language - this hefty volume, the life's work of Mrs. Margaret Grieve, is also a fascinating work of social, economic, culinary and botantical history, with folklore from throughout the world, and a required reference work for that reason. It is one of those works better known by its author's name than by its actual title, and so people will say, "I read it in Mrs Grieve." There are many New Age herbal books on the market now. 'A Modern Herbal' was first published in 1931 and remains unsurpassed. No well-resourced gentleman should be without a copy in his library.
Herodotus - Father of Lies. Those who suppose that history is a science much prefer Thucydides, but the histories of Herodotus are vastly more entertaining and give a much richer sense of the ancient world. Herodotus understands history to be a narrative, a story, and its telling an art, and he is one of the great storytellers of all time. This is a work that should be read by any educated person and routinely makes it onto lists of 'Great Books', but from our position in late modernity any work that strongly evokes the grandeur, sweep and heroism of antiquity is out of phase. Few books do that like Herodotus.
THE HISTORIES - Herodotus
THE BOOK OF CHANGES - the Richard Whilhelm translation
It is not just the ancient mantic texts of the I Ching that are worthy here, but the Confucianist commentary combined with the sedate generosity of Herr Whilhelm's Lutheran schooling that makes this particular translation so essential. Some say that Whilhelm has polluted the text with Lutheran conservatism. On the contrary, he has found synergy in Confucian conservatism; this is a great work of east/west synthesis as are all the best translations. So it is not pure enough for post-colonial measures of authenticity. This is what makes it out of phase: the orientalist enhances the original text with a European sensibility.
THE I CHING - THE CROWLEY TRANSLATION
This is a small masterpiece of Crowleyean poesy. Crowley counted himself the greatest English poet since Milton. Critical opinion begs to differ. Generally speaking, the Master Therion's verse - where it it is not deliberately vile and obscene - is a dreadful imitation of Swinburne. He did, however, translate the entire I Ching into short, terse rhymes, a somewhat remarkable feat. The rhymes are lame but the overall effect is impressive. This is how a translation should be done. Translation is appropriation. To hell with authenticity! He made the I Ching his own, and good on him for that.
LOGIC & TRANSCENDENCE - Frithjof Schuon
LOGIC & TRANSCENDENCE - Frithjof Schuon
The most celebrated work by Monsieur Schuon is 'The Transcendent Unity of Religions' - and a fine work it is - but these days it is misused by advocates of global ecumenicism and George Soros' New World Order and those clammering for a one world religion. It is no longer the message we need to hear. More out of phase is this volume, 'Logic and Transcendence' which is a useful corrective to corrosive relativism. Schuon has attracted a certain cult of middle class American liberals. This is the Schuon book the present writer recommends. Schuon at his strongest.
This excellent volume of cultural history by the esteemed Mr. Dawson records his celebrated Gifford Lectures of 1947-1949 during which he famously demolished the anti-religious and anti-medieval prejudices of the modernists. Dawson is always eloquent and speaks with a refined Christian intelligence. He is an important Christian thinker, not least because of his influence upon such notable figures as T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkein. Dawson's work remains deeply relevant to our times.
THE MARSH ARABS - Wilfred Thesiger
Thesiger is the last of the great orientalist explorers. His more famous book is 'Arab Sands' and concerns his journeys into the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula. The writer of this present web journal, however, has not had the opportunity to read it, but he has read the companion volume 'The Marsh Arabs' which relates Mr. Thesiger's life among the Arabs in the marshlands of southern Mesopotamia. These same people and their ancient religion have since suffered a terrible fate under the tyrant Saddam Hussein and the world Thesiger describes is no more. Evocative, detailed, brilliant.
RELIGION & THE RISE OF WESTERN CULTURE - Christopher Dawson
THE SCRUTINIES OF SIMON IFF - Aleister Crowley
Mr. Crowley dabbled in short fiction throughout his checkered career as herald of the Aeon of Horus. His best literary creation is the magician/detective Simon Iff who undertakes to solve an array of crimes and occult mysteries usually with much wit, satire and some of Crowley's barely disguised contempt for the oppressive puritanical Christianity in which he was raised. This collection, 'The Scrutinies of Simon Iff' gives a good sample.
A late work in Baron Evola's ouevre, and more pessimistic about the advanced decline of Western civilization. All the same, he remains convinced that there is a way forward for those who are "aristocrats of the soul" and has here set out a "survival manual" for the same. This is a mature and reflective Evola who has at last seen the futility of grand reactionary schemes, and possibly his best work. Thoroughly and deliberately out of phase.
Monsieur Hadot's lifelong concern was to restore philosophy to the role it played in the ancient world, namely a transformative spiritual discipline, rather than the dry, abstract exercise in mental noise it has become in its modern academic form. His reading of Plato in this light is especially worthwhile. This is a book that changes the very nature of the philosophical enterprise. Very important.
The centrepiece of Herr Spengler's thesis in this celebrated reactionary work is that civilizations, or rather "cultures", are organic entities that are born, mature, grow old and die from cultural exhaustion. Far from only being concerned with the Occident, he turns his gaze to eartlier civilizations, east and west, eight of them in all. It is an important study - by its own account revolutionary in the Copernican sense - that lays the groundwork for a new generation of critics of modern liberal decadence. In the 1950s the Neo-marxist Adorno attempted to "turn Spengler's work from reactionary to progressive ends." Don't read Adorno. Read Spengler.
RIDE THE TIGER - Baron Julius Evola
DEMOCRACY: THE GOD THAT FAILED - Hans-Hermann Hoppe
'The God that Failed', to which this title alludes, is the title of a 1949 book concerning the manifest failures of communism. In this work by Herr Hoppe, a collection of thirteen essays, he makes a similar case concerning liberal democracy. This is one of the best books to disabuse readers of the quasi-religious adherence to the democratic creed that pervades our times. In fact, democracy is still prone to exactly the failures for which it was known in ancient times, and it is time somebody said so. Political heterodoxy, strongly out of phase. 
PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE - Pierre Hadot
THE BEST OF DAMON RUNYON - Damon Runyon
Tales of mobsters, gamblers and dames. The good-natured tales of Mr. Runyon, a natural story-teller, evoke the urban world of Prohibition era Broadway but are largely out of fashion and hence out of phase nowadays. Runyon writes resolutely in the present tense, with an unnamed narrator of uncertain purpose, and creates his own distinctive slang and idiom - 'Runyonese' - for these stories. A unique corpus of unfashionable urban commentary. All of these factors recommend them for this list of literary oddities.
THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT
The most mysterious book of the European Middle Ages. We still do not know who wrote it or why and its text continues to defy cryptographers both amateur and professional. It is clearly a herbal of some description, with astrological and alchemical sections, but the plants illustrated throughout are largely unidentifiable. The writer of this present journal has wasted countless hours pondering its strange and cryptic pages. For all of that, it is a beautiful artifact in itself, a treasure of fantasy, and deserves to be pondered and appreciated.
HOLIDAYS IN HELL - P. J. O'Rourke
No out of phase personal library would be complete without at least one volume by P. J. O'Rourke, and it may as well be 'Holidays in Hell'. The intrepid libertarian reporter, America's foremost living satirist - a satirist for an age when satire, they say, is dead - journeys to a series of post-colonial Third World socialist nightmares in the 1980s. Slick gonzo writing, loathed by the humorless Left. A joy.
HOLIDAYS IN HELL - P. J. O'Rourke
THE SEIGE OF LUCKNOW - Lady Julia Inglis
Lady's Inglis' harrowing first-hand account of the seige of Lucknow where the English residency was surrounded by mutinous and murderous Indian hordes. It is an account of valour, gallantry and exceptional heroism; the trimuph of noble values. The present author ventured to Lucknow to visit the ruins of the residency in recent times and read Lady Inglis' very moving journals whilst there.
EROS & THE MYSTERIES OF LOVE - Baron Julius Evola
Few works on this topic are really worth the attention they receive. Baron Evola, however, has managed to write a book on sex that is entirely worthy. It is beautifully free of modern obsessions, prejudices and assumptions; he argues that sexuality in the modern era is essentially depraved. Instead, he sets out traditional doctrines on erotic subjects, the metaphysics of eros, taking Plato as his starting point for first principles. This is a work that undermines all mainstream psychological and sociological approaches to the subject. Other traditionalist writers stay away from this subject. Evola dares to tackle it. Valuable for that reason.
THE DECLINE OF THE WEST - Oswald Spengler
THE GARDEN OF CYRUS - Thomas Browne
This peculiar little work concerns the symbolic import of the quincunx - a five-fold configuration - in plantation patterns in ancient orchards. Note the full title: 'The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered.' 1658. It may usefully lead one to a fuller considered of the mystical place of the quincunx in the occidental tradition. 
SENSITIVE CHAOS - Theodor Swenk
Herr Swenk explores the world of water. This is one of many fine studies of the natural world inspired by the philosophy of the Austrian polymath Rudolf Steiner who was, in fact, himself an exponent of the Goethean approach to the natural sciences. A beautiful work of heterodox science in the tradition of Goethe.
HOMO LUDENS - J. Huizinga
Huizinga is a great cultural historian. This volume is his classic account of the role of play and playfulness in human culture. It is a charming book and it is a pity it is not more widely known and appreciated. His thesis is that man is essentially a game player. He rightly draws out the theme of play in the philosophy of Plato.
THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND - Allan Bloom
The failure of higher education and the collapse of academic ideals into politically correct ideology is a matter of personal concern for the writer of this present journal: it is best prosecuted in this powerful indictment by Allan Bloom. No other work details the appalling state of modern Western education and the impoverished intellectuality of our times. An excellent and timely book.
THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF THE EASTERN CHURCH - Vladimir Lossky
If you only ever read one work on Eastern Orthodoxy, make it this. The Catholic tradition has its moments, but there is no escaping the fact that the Orthodox Tradition - with deeper roots in Greek philosophy as opposed to Roman legalism - is more profound, more mystical and more sublime by comparison. The treasures of Orthodoxy are commonly neglected in English and the Western European languages. (Let us note here that Rene Guenon just pretended that it didn't exist!) Lossky is one of the most cogent exponents of Orthodox theology. This is a book of great intellectual beauty.
Yours,
Harper McAlpine Black
Hi Harper,
ReplyDeleteHave you read a book called, 'Yuga: An Anatomy of Our Fate', by Marty Glass? It's an eclectic, highly idiosyncratic critique of contemporary Western society. Glass makes reference to Plato, the Tao Te Ching, Guenon, as well as Atlantis Monthly and Elle Magazine to name a few. I think you'd enjoy it. It rocked my world when I read it many years back and I haven't been brave enough to read it again since!
HP Lovecraft et le secret des adorateurs du serpent, by Jean Robin. That might be said to be out of phase. But is it really ? Things go so fast nowadays. And they are so chaotic.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I found your blog very interesting. Thanks.