occult.guruthe library
The Apparatus

A chronology of the occult

121 dates, from the painted caves to the replication crisis, in one line.

  1. The Deep Past

  2. c. 40,000–15,000 BPPainted and engraved caves of Europe, including Chauvet and Lascaux; the 'Sorcerer' of Trois-Frères, a figure part man and part stag.
  3. c. 9500 BCGöbekli Tepe, the oldest known monumental sanctuary, carved with animals, in south-eastern Turkey.
  4. 2nd millennium BCCompilation of the Babylonian omen series Enuma Anu Enlil.
  5. c. 1250–1050 BCShang dynasty oracle bones: the oldest substantial Chinese writing.
  6. c. 9th century BCThe Zhou yi, core of the I Ching, compiled.
  7. 8th century BCHomer's Odyssey, Book 11: the nekyia.
  8. c. 6th century BCThe Delphic oracle at the height of its authority; Pythagoras teaches the mysticism of number.
  9. c. 5th century BCThe zodiac of twelve equal signs appears in Babylonian astronomy.
  10. 410 BCThe oldest known horoscope, a cuneiform tablet.
  11. c. 314 BCTheophrastus, On Stones.

  12. Antiquity

  13. 2nd–1st century BCHellenistic horoscopic astrology formed in Egypt.
  14. 2nd century BC – 5th century ADThe Greek Magical Papyri.
  15. 44 BCCicero, De divinatione.
  16. AD 79The SATOR square scratched at Pompeii before the eruption.
  17. 98Tacitus, Germania, describes the casting of lots.
  18. 2nd centuryPtolemy's Tetrabiblos; Vettius Valens's Anthology; the philosophical Hermetica written in Egypt.
  19. 3rd centuryThe Leiden and Stockholm alchemical papyri; Serenus Sammonicus records ABRACADABRA.
  20. 3rd–6th centuryThe Sefer Yetzirah.
  21. c. 300Zosimos of Panopolis; Iamblichus, On the Mysteries.
  22. late 4th centuryThe oracle at Delphi falls silent under the Christian emperors.
  23. 386Augustine's conversion by bibliomancy in a garden at Milan.

  24. The Middle Ages

  25. 762Baghdad founded at an astrologically elected moment.
  26. c. 800–950The Emerald Tablet appears in Arabic; the Jabirian corpus written.
  27. 886Death of Abu Ma'shar, the great astrologer of Baghdad.
  28. c. 906The Canon Episcopi declares witches' night-flight a delusion.
  29. 10th–11th centuryThe Arabic Ghayat al-Hakim (Picatrix).
  30. 960–1279Song dynasty: fuji spirit-writing widespread in China.
  31. c. 1090Marbode of Rennes, Liber lapidum.
  32. 1144Robert of Chester's translation: the first Latin alchemy.
  33. c. 1176The Sefer ha-Bahir in Provence.
  34. 1256The Picatrix translated into Castilian for Alfonso X.
  35. c. 1260Albertus Magnus, De mineralibus.
  36. 1280sThe Zohar written in Castile, largely by Moses de León.
  37. c. 1300The Summa perfectionis of pseudo-Geber.
  38. 1317Pope John XXII condemns alchemical counterfeiting.
  39. 1370sPlaying cards reach Europe.

  40. Renaissance and Reformation

  41. 1440sTarot trumps added to cards in northern Italy.
  42. 1463Ficino translates the Corpus Hermeticum for Cosimo de' Medici.
  43. 1484Innocent VIII's bull Summis desiderantes affectibus.
  44. 1486Pico's nine hundred theses; the Malleus Maleficarum.
  45. 1489Ficino, De vita coelitus comparanda.
  46. 1492Expulsion of the Jews from Spain carries Kabbalah east.
  47. 1514Dürer's Melencolia I with the magic square of Jupiter.
  48. 1517Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica.
  49. 1527Paracelsus burns Galen and Avicenna at Basel.
  50. 1533Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published in full.
  51. 1564Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica.
  52. 1572Death of Isaac Luria at Safed.
  53. 1582–1587Dee and Kelley's angelic conversations: the Enochian system.
  54. 1590The North Berwick witch trials.
  55. 1600Giordano Bruno burned in Rome.
  56. 1614The Fama Fraternitatis; Casaubon redates the Hermetica.
  57. 1616The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.
  58. 1617Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens.
  59. 1644–1647Matthew Hopkins's witch-hunt in East Anglia.
  60. 1646Elias Ashmole admitted a Freemason.
  61. 1647William Lilly, Christian Astrology.
  62. 1677The Mutus Liber.
  63. 1692The Salem witch trials.

  64. Enlightenment and Romanticism

  65. 1701Bouvet sends Leibniz the diagram of the hexagrams.
  66. 1717The Grand Lodge of London and Westminster founded.
  67. 1735The British Witchcraft Act.
  68. 1745Swedenborg's visions begin.
  69. 1776The Bavarian Illuminati founded.
  70. 1781Court de Gébelin declares the tarot Egyptian.
  71. 1782Anna Göldi executed for witchcraft at Glarus.
  72. 1784A French royal commission with Franklin and Lavoisier investigates Mesmer.
  73. c. 1789Etteilla issues the first tarot deck designed for divination.
  74. 1801Francis Barrett, The Magus.
  75. 1822Champollion deciphers the hieroglyphs.
  76. 1833Chevreul demonstrates the involuntary movement of the pendulum.

  77. The Nineteenth Century

  78. 1847Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature.
  79. 31 March 1848The Fox sisters at Hydesville: Modern Spiritualism begins.
  80. 1852W. B. Carpenter names the ideomotor action.
  81. 1853Table-turning craze; Faraday's experiments; the planchette appears in France.
  82. 1854–1856Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie.
  83. 1855Robert Hare, Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations.
  84. 1857Allan Kardec, The Spirits' Book.
  85. 1868D. D. Home's reported levitation at Ashley House.
  86. 1871Crookes tests Home.
  87. 1875The Theosophical Society founded in New York.
  88. 1880The Curies discover piezoelectricity.
  89. 1882The Society for Psychical Research founded; Myers coins 'telepathy'.
  90. 1885William James meets Leonora Piper.
  91. 1886Phantasms of the Living.
  92. 1888The Golden Dawn founded; The Secret Doctrine; Mathers's Key of Solomon; Maggie Fox's confession.
  93. 1891The Ouija patent granted, 10 February.
  94. 1894The Census of Hallucinations.
  95. 1896James's 'white crow' address.
  96. 1899Shang oracle bones identified.

  97. The Twentieth Century

  98. 1904Crowley receives The Book of the Law in Cairo.
  99. 1908The Kybalion published.
  100. 1909The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot.
  101. 1912The American birthstone list adopted by jewellers.
  102. 1913Patience Worth begins through Pearl Curran's board.
  103. 1914Schrenck-Notzing's photographs of Eva C.'s ectoplasm published.
  104. 1921Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.
  105. 1924Houdini and the Margery investigation.
  106. 1929Krishnamurti dissolves the Order of the Star.
  107. 1930The first sun-sign newspaper horoscope; the R101 séance.
  108. 1934J. B. Rhine, Extra-Sensory Perception.
  109. 1936Keynes buys Newton's alchemical papers.
  110. 1941Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
  111. 1944Helen Duncan convicted under the Witchcraft Act; Jung, Psychology and Alchemy.
  112. 1945The Nag Hammadi codices discovered.
  113. 1951The Witchcraft Act repealed; the Parapsychology Foundation founded.
  114. 1954Gardner, Witchcraft Today.
  115. 1964Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.
  116. 1969The Thoth tarot published.
  117. 1972Remote viewing research begins at SRI.
  118. 1978Soal's card data shown to be manipulated; Carroll's Liber Null.
  119. 1979PEAR founded at Princeton; Faivre's chair in Paris; Starhawk, The Spiral Dance.
  120. 1985Carlson's double-blind test of astrology in Nature.
  121. 1986The Hyman–Honorton joint communiqué on the ganzfeld.
  122. 1995Stargate evaluated and terminated.
  123. 1999Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon.

  124. The Twenty-first Century

  125. 2001De Boer and Hale report geological faults and ethylene under Delphi.
  126. 2007PEAR closes.
  127. 2008Anna Göldi exonerated; the Fraudulent Mediums Act repealed.
  128. 2011Bem's 'Feeling the Future' helps trigger psychology's replication crisis.
  129. 2012Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy.

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