The source corpus

The Great Library of Light

Everything the Wisdom Wheel says is built from a specific, countable body of source works. Here is the whole of that body, named: 117 titles across ten traditions, each one read closely enough to cite and cross referenced against all the others.

  • 117source works
  • 10traditions
  • 48,726indexed passages
A lone neoclassical library at night, its doorway lit gold, the Milky Way overhead and mirrored in the wet stone.

These books are not quoted at you. Each one is read in full, indexed passage by passage, and cross referenced against every other work in the collection, so what meets you when you ask the Wisdom Wheel a question is not any single book. It is the resonance between them. Where a Hermetic treatise, a Buddhist sutra, and a modern neuroscientist describe the same structure in three different vocabularies, that agreement is what the work is built on.

What is the Great Library of Light?

It is the complete set of source works behind Empire of Light: 117 titles spanning Hermetic philosophy, Kabbalah, Gnostic scripture, Taoist and Vedic classics, the Buddhist canon, biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, the energy body, and modern consciousness research. Every one has been read in full and indexed to the passage, never summarised from a review.

Are these books quoted directly?

Rarely, and never as proof on their own. A passage carries weight here only when other traditions, writing in different centuries and different languages, arrive at the same place. You will meet the agreement between the books far more often than any single sentence from one of them. The Journal is where that gets shown at length.

Ten traditions. This is the foundation the work draws from, and it deepens with every text brought in.

Hermetic and Renaissance Esoterica

The European tradition holding that mind and cosmos share one law.

  • Initiation Into Hermetics (Franz Bardon)
  • The Complete Golden Dawn (ed. Israel Regardie)
  • Corpus Hermeticum (trans. G.R.S. Mead)
  • The Kybalion
  • Codex Esoterica (Tyler Engle)
  • Three Books of Occult Philosophy
  • The Hermetic Arcanum
  • Transcendental Magic (Eliphas Levi)

Kabbalah and the Western Mystery Tradition

The Jewish mystical map of how creation descends into form.

  • The Mystical Qabalah (Dion Fortune)
  • The Tree of Life (Israel Regardie)
  • The Tarot of the Bohemians (Papus)
  • Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation

Gnostic Scriptures

Early Christian texts left out of the canon, recovered in 1945.

  • The Gnostic Religion (Hans Jonas)
  • The Gnostic Bible
  • The Nag Hammadi Library (3rd Edition)
  • The Secret Book of John

Taoist and Chinese Classics

China's art of moving with reality instead of against it.

  • The Ultimate I Ching (Antony Cummins)
  • Tao Te Ching
  • Cultivating the Energy of Life (Liu Hua-yang, trans. Eva Wong)

Vedic and Yogic Tradition

India's oldest teaching on the self behind the self.

  • Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda)
  • The Bhagavad Gita, in the Light of Kriya Yoga

Buddhist Canon

The Buddha's instructions on how suffering is built and unbuilt.

The Buddhist Sutra Collection, thirteen volumes and 13,371 indexed passages. It is the second largest holding in the library.

  • Sutra Collection, Volume A1
  • Sutra Collection, Volume A2
  • Sutra Collection, Volume B
  • Sutra Collection, Volume C
  • Sutra Collection, Volume D
  • Sutra Collection, Volume EFG
  • Sutra Collection, Volume HIJK
  • Sutra Collection, Volume L
  • Sutra Collection, Volume M1
  • Sutra Collection, Volume M2
  • Sutra Collection, Volume NOP
  • Sutra Collection, Volume RS
  • Sutra Collection, Volume S

Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Canon

Scripture, and the older regional texts it grew up beside.

  • The Grand Bible, 6th Edition, 71 books, listed below
  • The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1 to 1.4)

Modern Consciousness and Transformation

Contemporary researchers testing the old claims against the body.

  • You Are the Placebo (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
  • Evolve Your Brain (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
  • Becoming Supernatural (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
  • Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
  • Mastering the Manifestation Paradox

The Energy Body and Healing Arts

How breath, charge, and attention move through a living body.

  • The Subtle Energy Body (Maureen Lockhart)
  • Charge and the Energy Body (Anodea Judith)
  • The Healing Power of the Breath (Brown and Gerbarg)
  • Weight Loss Through Fasting

Esoteric History and Inner Work

Arguments about where the tradition came from, and what to do with it.

  • Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (Ignatius Donnelly)
  • The Albigen Papers (Richard Rose)

This library is living. New works are read and woven in continually, and the numbers on this page move when they are.

Why does the Bible here look different?

Because it is a specific edition, not the standard one. The Grand Bible, 6th Edition is an independent modern compilation that gathers canonical, deuterocanonical, and pseudepigraphal scripture into a single corpus of 71 books. Its selection deliberately differs from a standard Bible, so some familiar books are absent and many unfamiliar ones are present.

Psalms, Isaiah, Job, Proverbs and the other poetic and prophetic books are not in this edition. Its compiler favoured the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts a standard Bible leaves out.

The Grand Bible, 6th Edition, an independent modern compilation (ed. Lord Henfield). All 71 books, in full:

  • 1 Corinthians
  • 1 Enoch
  • 1 Esdras
  • 1 John
  • 1 Kings
  • 1 Maccabees
  • 1 Peter
  • 1 Samuel
  • 1 Thessalonians
  • 1 Timothy
  • 2 Baruch
  • 2 Corinthians
  • 2 Enoch
  • 2 Esdras
  • 2 John
  • 2 Kings
  • 2 Maccabees
  • 2 Peter
  • 2 Samuel
  • 2 Thessalonians
  • 2 Timothy
  • 3 John
  • 3 Maccabees
  • 4 Baruch
  • 4 Maccabees
  • Acts
  • Additions to Esther
  • Apocalypse of Esdras
  • Apocalypse of Zephaniah
  • Ascension of Isaiah
  • Baruch
  • Bel and the Dragon
  • Colossians
  • Deuteronomy
  • Ephesians
  • Epistle of Jeremiah
  • Exodus
  • Galatians
  • Genesis
  • Hebrews
  • James
  • John
  • Joshua
  • Jubilees
  • Jude
  • Judges
  • Judith
  • Ladder of Jacob
  • Leviticus
  • Life of Adam and Eve
  • Luke
  • Mark
  • Matthew
  • Numbers
  • Philemon
  • Philippians
  • Prayer of Azariah
  • Prayer of Manasseh
  • Revelation
  • Romans
  • Ruth
  • Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
  • Testament of Abraham
  • Testament of Isaac
  • Testament of Jacob
  • Testament of Job
  • Testament of Moses
  • Testament of Solomon
  • Titus
  • Tobit
  • Wisdom of Solomon

Every one of these books was read so the Wheel could ask you a better question.

See Where You Stand on the Wisdom Wheel the assessment this library feeds

Sources are honored as languages describing one truth, never as the final word.

The library is not finished, and it is not meant to be. What is listed here is what has been read. What comes next is already being read.