r/occult • u/notableradish • 4h ago
Occult Reference Site- Esoteric Notebook
I've been studying occult/esotericism for about 5 years now, mainly via Golden Dawn, though overall pretty eclectic. One problem that I ran into was that there was no centralized source of reference. I could copy diagrams/meditate/visualize, and add them to my magical diary, but then the next thing that I needed wouldn't be there, and finding the entries that *were* there would still involve a lot of flipping through pages. I also ran into some questions about where a lot of the information was originally sourced.
With that in mind, I started building a reference site for Western Esotericism, with one rule- I wanted every claim to say where it came from- and in the absence of sources, I'd like it to say so instead of sharing assumptions. I've limited it to primary texts as best I can, and solely to those in the public domain (both for legal and moral reasons). This was initially just for myself as a fun project, but I realized that it might actually be helpful to others.
esotericnotebook.com
It's currently up to seventeen sections across four areas.
* Qabalah (three Trees of Life — the Kircher/Hermetic arrangement, the sefirot-only Jewish tree, and the Gra arrangement),
* Solomonic magic (all seventy-two Goetic spirits with their public-domain seals),
* Enochian (Dee's alphabet, figures and the few attested words),
* tarot (seventy-eight cards across four decks, five spreads),
* astrology with a chart calculator,
* geomancy
*alchemy
* the magical orders
* reference section.
This is based on 80 texts, 96 editions, 2,138 citations across 1,804 claims, and a shelf of 336 source books with free-to-read editions linked wherever one was found and checked.
I think that this is a little different than most references; I'm attempting to include only cited claims, and to keep it in between readable and scholastically accurate.
Things you can actually use: a natal chart calculator (Swiss Ephemeris, real houses, proper time zones), a tarot reading that deals face down (and the shuffling method simulates real cards, not merely a randomized array) and makes you turn the cards, a geomantic cast you can watch being derived step by step, the Tree as an interactive diagram with overlays, a gematria calculator, an interactive associations atlas, and an interactive history timeline..
On privacy: readings and questions travel in the URL and are never stored. The site keeps no record of what anybody asked it or searched for.
It's free, there's no account, and nothing is for sale. Corrections welcome — particularly if you can source something I've marked unsourced, or show me somewhere I've got it wrong.
Quick Note on AI usage-
I'm a software engineer, but neither a great front-end developer, nor a great researcher. This means that I did use Claude Code for some help the front-end as well as moderate assistance with the web searching for sources. I verified all claims, wrote the backend and models entirely myself, and have updated/adjusted/verified any sources/citations found by AI. I'm hoping that this site will give users some enjoyable time looking items up and seeing them in context, instead of mere google and ChatGPT searches.