From: oispeggy@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown)
Subject: list of magick oriented fiction
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 00:28:00 GMT

Here is the list of magick oriented fiction, in no particular order.
Disclaimer: I only edit (slightly), I don't decide what is fiction or
what is worth reading.  Additional contributions can be sent to
oispeggy@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu.

***
You might enjoy adding Charles Williams to your list.  He was a noted
English novelist, poet, and editor for Oxford U. Press.  He was a
member of the Golden Dawn for awhile, then returned to being
spokesperson for a kind of mystical Christianity.  His novels all have
an occult background/framework/characters.

Dione Fortune also wrote novels, as well as being a practicing
Freudian psychologist.  Try finding _The Goat-Footed God_, _The Winged
Bull_, or _Moon Magic_ for an interesting experience.

***
Argentinian Jorge Luis Borge 
Cuban Alejandro Carpentier 
Columbian/Mexican Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
German Gunter Grass,
Englishman John Fowles.

Thomas Pynchon 
John Barth
Donald Bartheme
William Gass
Robert Coover
Ishmael Reed. 

See Scholes _Fabulation and Metafiction_ (1979).

***
Macbeth
The Tempest
Midsummer Night's Dream

Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs 
Jorge Luis Borges and Garcia Marquez 
Fritz Leiber 

As for current magazines
Elegia
/ 3116 Porter Lane/
Ventura Ca 93003 provides a fairly high understanding of the
magical process cast in the current Gothic idiom.

***
For me seminal works were Mythology from Norse, Tuetonic, Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, N. and S. American Indian mythology, Fairytales of all
types....2001 Arabian Nights, Grimm Brothers, etc.

Books by David Edding, Roger Zelazny, Tolkien, Margaret St. Clair,
Childhoods End by A.C. Clarke, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Door
Into Summer by Ray Bradbury, The Shining by S. King, anything by Kurt
Vonnegut or Tom Robbins and along those lines anything which makes you
think about the soup we are swimming in in a different way.  Oh yeah,
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court by Mark Twain.

*** 
  o Everything by Carlos Castaneda
  o Stranger in a Strange Land
  o The Illuminatus Trilogy
  o Masks of the Illuminatus
  o The Little Prince
  o The Wizard of Oz
  o The Velveteen Rabbit
  o The Secret Garden
  o Dune (all of it)
  o Mary Stewart's Arthur/Merlin series (The Crystal Cave, The
    Hollow Hills, etc....)

***
Zanth series, Piers Anthony
Hitch Hiker guide, Douglas Adams
Witches of Eastwick, VanDike
All of Edgar Allen Poe stuff
IvanHoe
The Source, James Mitchner
Flat Land
Wild Card series, forget Author
Sot Weed  Factor, forget author's name, also "Aztec".

***
 Damn! Anything by William Seward Burroughs. Check out the beginning of
_Cities of the Red Night_.

***

If you haven't ever read _The White Goddess_ by Robert Graves, you
might find it illuminating 
[I think it's in the nomansland between fiction and]
[non-fiction. Comments?               --Ceci       ]

***
the lorax (heavy, though I had the basics prior)
lord of the rings (heavy)
earthsea trilogy (heavy)
riddlemaster trilogy (heavy)
once and future king (heavy, recent)
master of five magics (strong)
moonchild (though I don't consider this to be that good a book, it did
           influence my practice strongly)
little, big (a heavy influence)
mindkiller (slight, in regards substances)
illusions (heavy)
jonathan livingston seagull (moderate)
dune (recent and strong)

range: light, moderate, strong, heavy...

*** 
All Darkover books by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Most Mercedes Lackey books (The Valdemar series, the Tarma & Kethry stories,
                            Diana Tregarde books, etc.)
The Mists of Avalon by MZB
Gossamer Axe & Strands of Starlight by Gael Baudino
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
Where the Wild Things Are (Oops, forgot the Author)

***
Katherine Kurtz' Deryni novels
The Adept novels by Kurtz/Harris
_The Inheritor_ by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Lord of the Rings (if for no other reason than it sparks creativity)

***
    The Last Unicorn -  This is WONDERFUL.  If you have ever been a
      bumbling, inept sorcerer who wondered if you were ever going
      to get it, this book is for you.  We're all in here.

    Seven Arrows - I would call *this* more fiction than Castaneda.

    Island, Heven and Hell - the last one really isn't fiction.
      What the h...uh..eck.

    Any other Huxley, most Heinlein.

***
I am fond of The Illuminatus Trilogy, The Mists of Avalon (MZ
Bradley), and The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper) (also other books by
Cooper).  Oh...and the Diana Tregarde stories by Mercedes Lackey.

***
>  o Stranger in a Strange Land

/hug /smile Have you read the rest of his stuff?  If not, it's be a
red-hot idea... as I mentioned on another thread once, Heinlein was a
frighteningly intelligent rational occultist, and a lot of his stuff
(esp. later works) is liberally seeded with bits of such information.

***
*Support Your Local Wizard* by Diane Duane
 (also published in paperback as *So You Want To Be A Wizard*, *Deep
  Wizardry*, and *High Wizardry*)
*The Roads of Heaven* by Melissa Scott
 (also published in paperback as *Five-Twelfths of Heaven*, *Silence in
  Solitude*, and *The Empress of Earth*)
*Dragonsbane*  by Barbara Hambly
*Seaward* by Susan Cooper
*Charmed Life* by Diana Wynne Jones
*Moon of Three Rings* by Andre Norton

also three story lines in comic books, namely:
The *Magik* limited series (#1-#4)
The original *Elfquest* (#1-#20)
The Phoenix saga (Uncanny X-Men #100-#137)

and one television show, "Blake's 7" (first two seasons)

*** 
Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
Tarot series by Piers Anthony
Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean Auel
Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
all the Castaneda books
Moonchild by Aleister Crowley
all Dion Fortune fiction
Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin
all H.P. Lovecraft books
all H.P. Lovecraft-related books by Dereleth, Berglund, Copper, F.B. Long,
Lumley, Macdonald, C.A. Smith
Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
Elric series by Michael Moorcock
Witch World series by Andre Norton
Arthur/Merlin series by Mary Stewart
Cat Magic by Whitley Strieber
Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
all Robert Anton Wilson fiction
Amber series by Roger Zelazny

***
 	Tolkien, J.R.R., _The_Silmarillion_
	MacAvoy, Rhonda A., _A_Trio_For_Lute_, also published as 3 books:
		_Damiano_, _Damiano's_Lute_, and _Raphael_
	Tarr, Judith, _The_Hound_and_the_Falcon (trilogy)

Some others which, while not directly influencing my practice, have
been useful sources of insight, include:

	Baudino, Gael, _Strands_Of_Starlight_ and _Gossamer_Axe_
	MacAvoy, Rhonda A., _Twisting_The_Rope_ and _Book_of_Kells_

I also enjoy works by Katherine Kurtz, although she draws on mainly
the same sources I have myself, and thus hasn't affected my practice
per se.

*** 
_The Mists of Avalon_, Marion Zimmer Bradly
The Elric books, Michael Moorcock
The Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis
Various fairy tales
The Mary Poppins books, P.L. Travers
Various fantasy/sci-fi books and stories

*** 
Definitely, Niven and Gerrold, THE FLYING SORCERRS. ("There are no
spells for deconsecrating house trees? I'll make one!")

*** 
So many kids' books have a great sense of open wonder about things,
and it's so easy to lose that.  Sad.

But anyway:

The Magic Pebble
All H. P. Lovecraft
The Deryni series
Clive Barker's works (a real Chaos magician, this guy.)
The Lord of the Ring series (of course)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
The Doctor Strange comics (an influence since mostly abandoned)
Works, Jorge Luis Borges, particularly _Labyrinths_

Some recent nonfiction influences:

_Chaos_, James Gleick
_The Hologrphic Universe_, Talbott
_Care of the Soul_, Thomas Moore

***
Poul Anderson "Hrolf Kraki's Saga" and his Time Patrol stories.
There are plenty of good Asatru tales in there.

His Technic civilization series doesn't have a magickal focus,
but it reached to techno-pagan in me.

*** 
All of the Deryni books by Katheryn Kurtz.

*** 
 Someone mentioned children's books. All of Madeleine L'Engle's books
(The _Wrinkle in Time_ series, _A Ring of Endless Light_, etc.) are
wonderful. If you can get past the Christian imagery, there is a lot
of magick happening in her books. They're what got me started.

*** 
Anyone read _Way_of_the_Peaceful_Warrior_ by Dan Millman?

***
Odd as it sounds, Piers Anthony wrote a most interesting trio of
books called the Tarot series (God of, ...can't remember all of them).

After reading them, I felt much more in tune with my cards as I felt I
had a better understanding of their history and the transformations
they've gone through.

Marion Zimmer Bradly had profound influence with Mists of Avalon.

And I lost myself in the dream of majik in the Hobbit/Ring series.

***
Piers Anthony's TAROT book is must reading for any serious Tarot
student.  The original three books were recently revised and augmented
by the author and published as one volume.  I don't have the reference
handy. What is most intriguing is his theory of the Tarot, including a
very convincing argument that the Tarot should have FIVE, not four
suits of 20 cards each, thus yielding a deck of 100 cards.  The fifth
suit he named the suit of AURA, or Spirit.  There is much to work with
here, including the development of a deck to publish, if someone with
enough talent and perserverence could persuade Piers Anthony to permit
it.

*** 
'the book of the new sun' (and 'the urth of the new sun') by gene
wolfe. and anything else by john crowley.

*** 
Re: Piers Anthony's Tarot card deck
  I still remember the night I finished the Tarot series, because I
had to make myself a deck like his...  Index cards work fine... I am
not a very good artist (with drawing that is :-) ) so I simply wote
the number and suit, then added symbols or simple drawings that seemed
to fit what I understood the card to mean over time.  I don't meditate
with the cards anymore, but I remember that I felt much more
comfortable with those cards than with either my first set (mythology)
or last set (Rider).  -my $.02, after taxes-

***
Here are a few which have helped me to re-imagine occult knowledge in
ways more useful to an Initiate working in the late 20th century:

IMAJICA, WEAVEWORLD, THE GREAT & SECRET SHOW  --Clive Barker

In each of these novels, Barker makes use of radically different
metaphors for magic. In WEAVERWORLD, it is an essence of the body; in
particular, a woman's body --"the menstruum". In THE GREAT & SECRET
SHOW, magic is a sort of legal process: particular magics are referred
to as "suits" and "petitions". In a sense, the books represent the two
(only two?!) sides of magic, the intuitive and the intellectual, the
masculine and the feminine.  The gap between the two (if there _is_
such a gap!) is bridged in IMAJICA, which is about --to speak very
generally-- Men, Women, Sex, Games and Magic. An indispensable
book. I'll be rereading it again soon!

THE EARTHSEA TRILOGY   --Ursula K. LeGuin 

Do I need to say anything? 


WINTERLONG, AESTIVAL TIDE, ICARUS DESCENDING  --Elizabeth Hand

These books are about the re-awakening of magic, old gods and new
monsters in a post-apocalypse America. A weird blend of neo-pagan and
cyberpunk sensibilities. Terrifying, lyrical, and deep.

***
I've read Stephen Lawhead's _Pendragon Cycle_ and thought it the best
telling of the Arthurian tale that I have read.  (The others I've read
are T. H. White's book and Mary Stewart's series) I particulary liked
his depiction of Merlin.  If I remember correctly he seems to have
left out all that business about Lancelot and Guinevere's affair which
I've always found tedious.  But I guess that's just me.

*** 
 	For me the books that put me on the path include...

		-The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
		-Tolkien
		-Madelein L'Engles Time Trilogy
		-Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde Books

*** 
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
Tolkien: The Hobbit
Tolkien: Tree and Leaf
William Horwood: Duncton Wood
Ursula LeGuin: Earthsea Trilogy
Ursula LeGuin: Left Hand of Darkness

*** 
I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned Hermann Hesse (or for
that matter, Thomas Mann, who I am currently struggling with- Germans
will tell you how intricate and difficult his use of the language can
be) who was an enormous influence on my intellectual and spiritual
development.  All (well, almost all- there are a few forgettable ones)
of his books are worth reading, in particular _Demian_ and _Das
Glasperlenspiel_ (The title of the latter is sometimes translated
directly as "The Glass Bead Game" but you will also see it referred to
as "Magister Ludi"- the master and teacher of the game- since one of
the early translators got creative). _Das Glasperlenspiel_ is the
novel that won Hesse the Nobel Prize for literature, incidentally.

The one novel I have read that was most densely and intensely packed
with real magick has got to be _A Wizard of Earthsea_ by Ursula
K. LeGuin.  Worth digging up and rereading if you haven't read it
since adolescence.  Worth rereading anyway.

As a Roman Catholic, I found Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series, in
particular the Camber trilogy, very intriguing when I first read
them. They probably were largely responsible for my curiousity about
western ceremonial magic- also seeing lots of strange traces of
paganism and magick all over Germany as an adolescent- the eye in the
triangle on some bishop's robes in a museum, a chapel to St. Michael
on a hill near my home where archaeologists were uncovering a number
of stone age or bronze age artifacts- probably a holy site as long as
people had been there, etc.  Going back to Kurtz, when I first read
her rituals in the camber books I remember feeling the air positively
crackle around me.  Convinced me at the time that there might be
something to this stuff.

Thyagi brought up one I hadn't realized had affected me so much- Frank
Herbert's first Dune book.  Really amazing stuff- the messianic
silliness really wore thin in the later books but the first was a
marvelous synthesis of the forces in contemporary culture that lean
towards supermanism.

Ezra Pound, if poetry counts as fiction.
Lately Thomas Pynchon just for the weirdness and paranoia.

My father read _The Hobbit_ to me and my brother at bedtime
("serializing") when I was about five or six.  I am convinced by
Tolkien's style in _The Hobbit_ that he intended it to be read aloud
to children, though my personal bias here is heavy.  I plan to someday
read it aloud to my eventual children.  Beyond this, though, I don't
see much influence by Tolkien on my worldview.  (and yes, I
compulsively reread _The Lord of the Rings_ for a year or two of my
live, but that was so long ago... I _should_ eventually get around to
rereading it.

Do the speeches in Zarathustra count as fiction?

I would stretch things a little and count _Apocalypse Now_ as a pretty
big influence too.

Jim Morrison's lyrics and poetry, which like a lot of Crowley's work
have their own serious problems and shouldn't be integrated
wholeheartedly and credulously into one's psyche/worldview, but are
nonetheless definitely worth one's while.

Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Chronicles, just to be hip.

Aldous Huxley, whose fiction led me to a strange little book called
_The Doors of Perception_ (The edition I read included _Heaven and
Hell_ also), and led me from there to Blake and a touch of Swedenborg,
and Leary, and other things...

I would stretch things a little and include Douglas Hofstadter's
_Goedel, Escher. Bach_ and _Metamagical Themas_ since they were my
first introduction to Zen and to quantum mechanics.  Hofstadter is
also refreshing since he is apparently a rather devout skeptic.

Robert Anton Wilson wrote a strange book called _Cosmic Trigger_ which
explained it all to me.

***
I'll second the Ursula Le Guin books, as well as the L'Engle and the
Mary Stewart. And I would add Mercedes Lackey, and almost excessive
reading of fairy tales from just about everywhere. (Gosh, I loved
growing up Unitarian...Sunday school was just too cool...:)

***
 From the _Wrinkle in Time_ series, I would say _A Swiftly Tilting
Planet_ affected me the most. 

"At Tara in this fatefull hour
I place all heaven with its power
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness,
All these I place
By God's almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness!"

Wow! What a spell! I also love _A Ring Of Endless Light_ from the
Austins' series, although ironically for me, it probably contains the
strongest Christian imagery. I guess some things are just universal,
huh? :)

***
I'll second the suggestion of Anthony's _Tarot_ series.  I found it
surprisingly worthwhile given the general quality of his books.

Others have made many good suggestions.  Some things I haven't seen
mentioned yet and which I found interesting are:

1. Tim Powers.  One of the best, most intelligent and literate
fantasy authors currently writing.  Try especially:

	_The Anubis Gates_ (which won the Philip K. Dick Memorial
	Award and I think the Hugo also).  Absorbing story of
	a present-day Shelley expert catapulted back in time
	to attend a lecture by the poet when things go awry...

	_On Stranger Tides_.  Rum, piracy and voudou in the
	Caribbean.  Not for the squeamish.

	_The Stress of Her Regard_.  A very interesting twist
	on vampirism in Romantic times.

[Note - I understand there's more than one contemporary novelist
called Tim Powers.  This one is American and was born in 1952 - I
think the other is British.]

2. There was at least one `comic book' (I can assure you, it was
hardly comic) that dealt intelligently with the occult and was clearly
written by a man who knew what he was about: that was DC Comics'
_Hellblazer_.  The author, Jamie Delano, left the series after issue
40; I didn't find the replacement author at all interesting and
stopped looking at it after issue 45.  Try to find 1-40 if you can.  I
have also had Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ suggested as a good one, but
haven't looked at it myself; the times Gaiman guest-wrote _Hellblazer_
make this look like a good bet, though.

3. _The Wind In The Willows_.  Take it or leave it.

4. Russell Hoban.  _Very_ suggestive.  Not all his works; _Turtle
Diary_ e.g., while a good novel, isn't to the point.  But try _Riddley
Walker_ and _The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz_.  Guaranteed to
stretch your mind.

5. John Fowles's _The Magus_ (not to be confused with Francis
Barrett's non-fiction occult work of the same title).  This one made
me actively psychotic for three days the first time I read it.  Highly
recommended, although perhaps you should reconsider if you have
paranoid tendencies.

6. And finally, Thomas Pynchon's wonderful, massive _Gravity's
Rainbow_.  Don't plan on anything much else that week.

*** 
>   1. Tim Powers.  One of the best, most intelligent and literate
>   fantasy authors currently writing.  

absolutely. the only complaint that I have about powers is that all of
his characters sound like they are twentieth century
californians. great writer though.

also james p. blaylock (or at least 'the paper grail' and 'the last
coin' (both of these books are very funny too)).

*** 
"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." Oliver Sacks.  -of course,
that's not terribly fictional, but what the hell.

***
I highly recommend the science fiction novel "Snow Crash", but Neal
Stephenson (recently released in paperback, ISBN 0-553-56261-4).  It's
a fascinating mix of "cyberpunk" SF, Sumerian mythology, and magick,
and is quite well written.  the SF Bay Guardian described it as a
cross between William Gibson's "Neuromancer" and Thomas Pynchon's
"Vineland".

***

>>Read Stephen Gaskin. I pretty much endorse that books as a realistic
>>description of how it felt...
>What is the title?

Haight Ashbury Flashbacks. Was published as 'Amazing Dope Tales' about
15 years ago I think.