LibraryThe founding books of each Tradition, in public-domain editions - the translation makes the public domain as much as the author. For each: what it is, and the public libraries where to read it. In the Sanctuary, at the Path tier, they are read in the reader, chapter by chapter.
The Poimandres, the Asclepius and the dialogues of Hermes, in the classic French translation: the founding text.
Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Wikisource ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The seven hermetic principles in one short, clear book - the one many begin with.
The book that refounded French occultism; read it for its symbols rather than its recipes.
An orderly, pedagogical introduction by the founder of the Martinist Order.
A doorway written with fever and clarity by a young poet who became a master.
Plotinus's fifty-four treatises, the Neoplatonic source from which Hermeticism drew the One, the Intellect and the Soul.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The account of the world's making by the Demiurge: the dialogue all of Hermeticism comments on.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The first great French study of the Kabbalah: its sources, its history, its doctrine.
The oldest kabbalistic treatise, short and dizzying: the letters, the numbers, the Sephiroth.
The same short treatise in Westcott's English translation, with his preface and notes: read it alongside Papus's.
Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The only complete French translation in the public domain; read slowly, one leaf at a time.
Tradition, history and method; a precious bibliography at the end.
The Zohar as read by Éliphas Lévi: a poetic introduction more than a translation.
Ten chapters on imitating, in everyday conduct, the thirteen attributes of mercy: Kabbalah turned into ethics.
The Unknown Philosopher's first book: man, his fall and his reintegration.
Three hundred and one songs of prayer and desire: the bedside book of the way of the heart.
The last great work: what a man can do for the world once he has turned around.
The theosopher of Görlitz translated by the Unknown Philosopher himself: the German source of the way.
The source of all Martinism, difficult and dense; read it after Saint-Martin, not before.
The history of the three currents, by the man who brought them together.
The Unknown Philosopher in short thoughts gathered from his whole work: the gentlest door into his house.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The Unknown Philosopher's epic-magical poem: Paris besieged by a crocodile, and the truth hidden beneath the fable.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Nine talks in which Papus sets out, as a man of his time, what alchemy and occultism mean by the Great Work.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The founding myth of French alchemy, under the arcades of the Innocents cemetery.
Twelve emblems and twelve texts: the Work in images, to meditate on rather than decode.
The philosopher's stone explaining itself, in a witty dialogue.
The best old introduction: principles, operations, symbols, in plain French.
A small treatise and a dream: the adept's journey, told in the first person.
A seventeenth-century treatise put under Flamel's name: the vocabulary of the Work as the adepts read it.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Saint-Pierre before the eruption, seen by a writer in love with the island: the light, the markets, the beliefs.
The Creole tales of Martinique, collected in the language itself: the island's oral memory.
A small dictionary of Creole proverbs in six dialects: the wisdom of the islands in one sentence.
The liveliest witness of the eighteenth-century Antilles: plants, remedies, customs - read with the critical eye its era demands.
The Caribs, the flora and the rites of the early days, described by an observant Dominican.
The text of abolition: the wisdom of the islands cannot be understood without what it went through.
Gallica · BnF ↗ Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The first novel written in Guianese Creole: a gold-washer's life, his conversations, his country - a founding text.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Saint-Domingue in 1791, the slaves' revolt seen by a young Hugo: a novel to read with its era in mind.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The most widely read public-domain French translation; the house's daily gospel comes from it.
Wikisource ↗ Projet Gutenberg ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Four short books, one chapter a day: the manual of the inner life for six centuries.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The first account of a soul seeking and finding itself; book X, on memory, is inexhaustible.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Gentleness as a method: a spirituality for people who have a life.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The little way: doing small things with great love.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Seventy-three short chapters to order a day between prayer, reading and work: the most read rule of the West.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Seven mansions, from the door to the centre: the most precise map of the inner path.
The fragments of the unfinished apology: the wager, the two infinities, the heart that has its reasons.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The lives of the saints as the Middle Ages told them, feast by feast: the great book of Christian images.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
A gospel of the poor in burning verses: the book that earned Lamennais his condemnation and his fame.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The beauty of Christianity as proof: dogmas, poetics, fine arts, worship - the book that reconciled a century with its faith.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The little girl Hope who leads her two big sisters: the poem of hope, to be read aloud.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The first French Catholic Bible translated from the original texts: the Catholic counterpart of the Segond.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The Song of the Blessed One: eighteen chapters on action, renunciation and love.
Gallica · BnF ↗ Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Three Upanishads - Isa, Katha and Kena - rendered into plain English and commented verse by verse by a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, for Western readers.
Internet Archive ↗ Projet Gutenberg ↗ Wikisource ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The epic of Rama in French: fidelity, exile, return - all of India in one story.
The hundred and ninety-five aphorisms of yoga with their classical commentaries: the source of all Indian meditation.
Yoga explained to the West by the man who brought it there: clear, direct, practicable.
Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Projet Gutenberg ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The whole epic of Rama, translated from Sanskrit by Alfred Roussel: the exile, Sita's abduction, the war of Lanka.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Four hundred and twenty-three verses: the most widely read words of the Buddha, in clear old French.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The great Mahayana sutra, in the translation that founded Buddhist studies in France.
Gallica · BnF ↗ Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The first Buddhist text translated into Chinese: short, concrete, to keep with you.
The Benares sermon and the great discourses, in the reference edition.
The life of the Buddha as a poem: not a canonical text, but a door.
A Belgian scholar rereads the texts: what early Buddhism really says of salvation, the path, discipline.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Ghosts, temples and Buddhist proverbs gathered by Hearn in Japan: Buddhism as lived, through stories.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The rule itself, in Old French, article by article: the daily life of the brothers.
The text that gave the Templars their soul: the monk-soldier, between the cloister and the world.
The interrogations published from the manuscripts: the truth of the trial, in the accused's own voice.
The first historical rehabilitation of the Order, with supporting documents.
The Holy Land in the time of the Templars, by the archbishop who saw them born.
The epic of Roncevaux in Bédier's translation: Christian chivalry at its source.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The tragedy that restored the Templars' honour before Napoleon's public: the trial, staged.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
A Sorbonne historian rereads the trial records: what is known, what was invented.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The novel of Templars and crusaders back from the Holy Land, in the translation signed by Alexandre Dumas.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The symbolism of the first degree explained with rigour; the Fellow Craft and the Master follow.
The "Ragon": the great nineteenth-century manual on the meaning of initiations.
Five dialogues on what Freemasonry is, and is not: the subtlest text on brotherhood.
Thirty-three chapters, one per degree of the Scottish Rite; monumental, to dip into.
The Tanakh in French by the Chief Rabbi of France: the reference Jewish translation, in the public domain.
Wikisource ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Reason and revelation reconciled, by the greatest Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages.
The only public-domain Talmud in French, in eleven volumes; open it at Berakhot, the blessings.
The prophets read as living voices, by a great orientalist; short and luminous.
A luminous lecture to understand what the Talmud is before opening it.
Six chapters of the sages' sayings, from Moses to the Tannaim: the tractate studied between Passover and Shavuot, one maxim at a time.
The great history of the Jewish people, from the origins to the nineteenth century, in five volumes.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
What the prophets brought to the world, reread by historical criticism: two articles by a liberal pastor who would become the first holder of the chair of the history of religions at the Collège de France.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
How Judaism refounded itself after the Temple: the masters, the schools, the birth of the Talmud.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The classic French translation; it is the one the house quotes.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The spiritual autobiography of Islam's greatest theologian: from doubt to Sufism.
Thirty birds set out to find their king: the great Sufi poem of the path, in French prose.
Wisdom, humour and mercy in anecdotes: Persia's best-loved book.
The birth of the science of societies in the fourteenth century, by a clear-sighted believer.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Rumi's mystical tales; the modern French translations are not in the public domain.
The quatrains of the poet of Nishapur, read here as Sufi sayings: the cup, the rose, the moment.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
An emperor writing to himself every evening: the first notebook of self-examination.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
What depends on us and what does not: fifty-three paragraphs that fit in a pocket.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Eighty-one chapters on non-action and water flowing down: the shortest of the great books.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Two years in a cabin to learn to live deliberately.
Wikisource ↗ Projet Gutenberg ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Silence, goodness, the deep life: thirteen essays to begin listening.
One hundred and twenty-four letters from a friend to a friend: wisdom at the rate of one a day.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
The Stoic master's lessons noted by his pupil Arrian: what depends on us, and the rest.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Ninety-three short essays: happiness is a decision, and it is tended like a garden.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Life is not short, we waste most of it: the most read of Seneca's treatises.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Men of court and town sketched in a sentence: a mirror that has not aged.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Seven speeches on love, up to Diotima's: from the beauty of bodies to Beauty itself.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Socrates's last day and his proofs of the soul's immortality: the dialogue of serene death.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Thinking for oneself, in four rules: the book with which modern philosophy begins.
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Nine hundred and forty-five maxims of a gentle moralist: "Great thoughts come from the heart."
Wikisource ↗ Gallica · BnF ↗ Internet Archive ↗ Readable in the Sanctuary
Three hundred books are read in the Sanctuary's reader, with your page kept from one visit to the next.
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