Occult Books Download
Ariel Wascom
So, the most recent edition of Call of Cthulhu has a section at the end of the list of Lovecraftian tomes which lists Occult Books. As opposed to Mythos Tomes, these books don't actually tell you how the world really works (hence they give no Cthulhu Mythos skill), but give increases to Occult skill. It's also mentioned that these make good filler for villain libraries; you can have info penned in the margin, or even a spell doodled on the endpapers, without giving a super-useful item to the party. The ones given stats in the rulebook are: Beatus Methodivo, The Emerald Tablet, The Golden Bough, I Ching, Isis Evolved, The Key of Solomon, Malleus Maleficarum, the Oracles of Nostradamus, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and The Zohar. I know Keepers have spent a lot of time and blog space writing up Mythos Tomes; what about some game stat interpretations of Real World occult books? Please post your interpretations below. Or, if you've come up with your own occult book with no mythos value, where you're proud of the backstory, feel free to post that here, too.
What got me on this topic was running "The Auction" scenario from The Asylum and Other Tales, a scenario compilation from the 2nd edition days. The auction catalogue has several items of occult interest but no Cthulhu Mythos function; I wanted to have stats for them in my game, so I put some research into them.
I am not a scholar, so I wasn't able to identify which Hebrew grimoire this might have been based on. It's given a publishing date of 1580, which was, I believe, the heyday of European magicians "discovering" the rich Kabbalistic tradition. I statted it out as follows:
Despite the lot title saying "The Book of the Dead," the author put in the description for "The Book of the Law" which is a different entity. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a book by E. A. Wallis Budge using the egyptological scholarship of the time to translate the Pyramid Texts and portions of the Papyrus of Ani. The Book of the Law was by Crowley, and much more appropriate for an occult auction.
I am not a practicing occultist, and would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable if my percentages seem "off." They're based on what I could find of the content, and the esteem in which the books are held. The Magus seems to be held in a very high esteem, for example, as a general reference work of the time, while several others were considered more minor (if important) works.
The Beatus Methodivo is usually printed as "Bermechobus" and should be written as the Bea-Methodius. It is supposedly written by Saint Methodius, but the authorship is generally described as being Pseudo-Methodius becaus nobody believes that. It is a book that prophecies the end of the world, a bit like Revelations,and has a pseudo-gnostic heritage. It appeared first as part of the Mirabilis Liber, which is a book of Christian prophecies from diverse sources. This one is seldom reprinted and is hard to find.
The Emerald Tablet is literally a single page of cryptic allegorical alchemical poetry, best read in the original Greek. It is all about the interpretation, but supposedly it covers the recipe to make the philosopher's stone. For those who want to know, the Alchemical belief was that it must be possible to produce metals the way nature and the Earth produces metals, and that was the Philosopher's stone, via a process of evaporation and condensation. Of course the real philosopher's stone was naturally occurring and relatively stable but immensely rare Americanium crystals.
The Golden Bough is a colossal 26 volume treatise on the anthropology of religion with particular reference to the role of human sacrifice and other fertility motifs. There is a still large (400 odd pages) condensed paperback volume with a Bosch painting on the cover (the Garden of Earthly delights).
The I Ching is an oracle that allows you to perform divination by casting yarrow stalks, or coins, and it will provide you with a cryptic series of suggestions about the situation that is troubling you. You know those Chinese six line pictograms with open or broken lines? It's about them. There are umpteen different translations and editions.
The Key of Solomon is a renaissance book that covers summoning demons via magical circles and the use of candles and a black mirror. it has a few other spells in it too. It uses the Transitus Fluvii alphabet of Agrippa in its sigils (which speaks to its origins pretty eloquently). This is not to be confused with other works attributed to Solomon, as there are quite a few.
Isis Unveiled is a large book by Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Movement. It is generally believed that she plagiarized it. The book's first chapter covers psychic phenomena and a critique of science, and the second covers a wide ranging treatment of religious philosophy. It also covers some weird and pretty racist statements about a pseudo-evolutionary theory of humanity.
The Oracles of Nostradamus has had many editions, and essentially contains a large number of 4 line poems in Old French, that purport to tell of future events. The prophecies tell, amongst other things, of the coming of 3 Antichrists. Plenty of reprints, as certain people try to hype up interest in Nostradamus every decade or so.
The Zohar is the primary text on Kabbalah. It is a big thick book on the mysteries of the Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible). It is an exegesis on the mystical cosmology of Kaballistic Judaism, and is considered a mystical text.
Yeah, certainly Alhazred came up with a good idea for a topic. In terms of this, I have what I call my "Dangerous Book Collection". It is not so much necessarily about collecting occult books, so much as books that have been banned for whatever spurious reasons, or books that have proven to be troublesome to their societies even if they weren't banned. Of course I have quite a few occult books in the collection, because they have been scheduled by the Vatican as being unfit for the eyes of Catholic layfolk.
Interestingly, the much vaunted Picatrix has been translated into English (from Spanish) in the last few years. While it is essentially just a short book detailing how to make amulets that allegedly harness the influence of the planets, it has this enormous reputation, and keeps showing up in RPGs as this occult "mega text". I'm not certain the subject matter really qualifies, as I doubt there is anything in it that hasn't been covered by Paracelsus or Albertus Magnus.
I've often thought that Sandy Petersen missed a step. The game included an Idea roll from the beginning. It was clear from his writings that Lovecraft intended that the "cosmic nihilistic truth" in his writings be accessible, just hidden or occulted by people who don't want to face the indifferent universe. Regular occult volumes should have been in there from the beginning, but given a Cthulhu Mythos bonus only if the reader succeeds in an Idea roll -- these volumes contain enough matter and cross-referencing that a reader can guess at the ultimate cosmic secrets, but only if they put the pieces together. So, real works like Daemonolatreia by Remigius should have been, maybe, +3% Occult, and +0% initial CM and +0/1% full CM. Maybe even give it a 7 MR in 7th edition terms. These are all numbers I pulled out of thin air since I've never read it and am not an occultist; they were just an example. I'd love to see someone who's read these real-world books, and understands their place in context, to weigh in with some numbers I could use in a game.
For a convention one-shot I have a cultist creating a book of necromancy out of human flesh. Any sources of the actual CREATION of a grimoire? I'm making a spell to Prepair Flesh to be an incorruptible page and iron-based ink using charcoal and blood. Even unfinished, anybody looking through it gets chills and a moan in the back of their mind with dreams for the next few days.
Or perhaps they could have a small MR, but not increase the Cthulhu Mythos skill - if you have the skill, then you can use the book as a reference, picking out the truth behind the occlusion, but it remains impenetrable to the uninitiated.
Regular occult volumes should have been in there from the beginning, but given a Cthulhu Mythos bonus only if the reader succeeds in an Idea roll -- these volumes contain enough matter and cross-referencing that a reader can guess at the ultimate cosmic secrets, but only if they put the pieces together.
Is there a comprehensive list of Mythos/Occult Tomes for use in BRP games someplace? I'm working out my own list of late-medieval books on various natural philosophy sort of subjects and I'm looking to build a bigger database...
c80f0f1006