The Occult Rejects

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Primary Sources
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Trans. James Freake; ed. and annotated by Donald Tyson. Llewellyn, 1993. The work itself dates to Agrippa’s developing project from 1510, with the complete revised three-book edition appearing in 1533. Google Books
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991. Particularly important for Augustine’s encounter with the “books of the Platonists,” inward ascent, and his Christian appropriation of Platonic metaphysics. WorldCat
Ficino, Marsilio. Three Books on Life. Ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies/Renaissance Society of America, 1989. This is one of the most important primary texts for the astrology, medicine, music, planetary influence, and natural-magic portions of the episode. Google Books
Meister Eckhart. The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. Trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. Paulist Press, 1981. Google Books
Nicholas of Cusa. On Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia. Trans. Jasper Hopkins. 2nd ed. Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985. WorldCat
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems. Ed. and trans. Stephen A. Farmer. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998. This should be one of our major Pico sources rather than relying on summaries of the 900 Conclusions. WorldCat
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid, with Paul Rorem. Paulist Press, 1987. Includes The Divine Names, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and Mystical Theology. Cambridge University Press
Core Modern Scholarship
Faivre, Antoine. Access to Western Esotericism. State University of New York Press, 1994. Very useful for correspondence, living nature, imagination, mediation, transformation, Christian Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and defining Western esotericism without treating it as one secret continuous religion. JSTOR
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2008. An excellent broad academic overview covering Renaissance magic, Cabala, planetary and angel magic, and later Western esoteric developments. OUP Academic
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Important for keeping our larger historical thesis rigorous and avoiding the mythology of one uninterrupted underground occult tradition. Cambridge University Press
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Probably the best compact methodological source for explaining what scholars mean by “Western esotericism,” including magic, astrology, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Christian theosophy, and occultism. Bloomsbury
Magee, Glenn Alexander, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Especially useful for our argument that mysticism and esotericism overlap historically without being identical categories. Cambridge University Press
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. Originally 1958; Pennsylvania State University Press edition, 2000. Still a foundational scholarly study of Ficino and Renaissance magic, although we should supplement it with newer scholarship rather than treating a 1958 interpretation as the final word. Penn State University Press
Christian Platonism and Mysticism
McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism. Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Crossroad, 1991.
McGinn, Bernard. The Growth of Mysticism. Vol. 2 of The Presence of God. Crossroad, 1994.
McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism. Vol. 3 of The Presence of God. Crossroad, 1998.
Louth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Oxford University Press. Excellent for exactly the transition we are tracing from Platonism into Christian mystical theology.
Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Very useful for Dionysius, Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing, and apophatic theology.
Pseudo-Dionysius is especially central because current scholarship describes him explicitly as a Christian Neoplatonist who transposed late pagan Neoplatonism, particularly Proclus, into a distinctively Christian context. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Ficino, Pico, Christian Kabbalah and Renaissance Magic
Wirszubski, Chaim. Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism. Harvard University Press, 1989. Essential for Pico and the actual Jewish material behind his Christian Kabbalah.
Farmer, Stephen A. Syncretism in the West. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998. Useful both as a primary-text edition and a huge scholarly commentary on Pico.
Dan, Joseph, ed. The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters. Harvard College Library, 1997.
Copenhaver, Brian P. Studies on Renaissance magic, Ficino, Pico, and the philosophical context of natural magic. Copenhaver is one of the scholars I’d rely on whenever we need to distinguish Ficino’s natural/spiritual magic from sensationalized claims about Renaissance occultism.
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic. Particularly valuable for Ficino’s spiritus, music, astrology, and the theological problem of distinguishing natural/spiritual operations from demonic magic. Penn State University Press
The Pico material deserves extra source discipline because scholarship is very clear that Christianizing Kabbalah was one of Pico’s central projects, not merely an incidental interest; his 900 Conclusions contained 119 explicitly Kabbalistic theses, and he interpreted Kabbalah as supporting Christology and Trinitarian theology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Agrippa
Lehrich, Christopher I. The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy. Brill, 2003. Excellent for ritual, language, signs, sigils, Kabbalah, angels, demons, and Agrippa’s theory of occult communication. De Gruyter Brill
Nauert, Charles G. Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought. University of Illinois Press, 1965. Still useful for Agrippa’s intellectual and religious context.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s revised Agrippa entry is also particularly useful because it emphasizes that Agrippa’s project was a deliberate attempt to restore magic as a “sublime and sacred science,” divided across natural, celestial, and religious/ceremonial magic, while connecting magical practice ultimately to God and spiritual pur

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EARLY-MODERN MAGIC AND THE GOETIC TRADITION
Anonymous. Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Frankfurt, 1587.
Harms, Daniel, James R. Clark, and Joseph H. Peterson, eds. The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2015. Based on Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.26.
Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Earliest printed A-text, 1604.
Mirčev, Andrej. The Poetics of Performance Diagrams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Weyer, Johann. Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Published as an appendix to later editions of De praestigiis daemonum.
Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. London, 1584.
Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or The Lesser Key of Solomon. Seventeenth-century manuscript compilation.
Peterson, Joseph H., ed. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis. Comparative manuscript edition.
ABRAMELIN AND RITUAL SPACE
Franchetto, Andrea. “Temporary and Imaginal Sacred Space in the Textual Transmission of Modern Ritual Magic: The Temple of Abramelin (15th–20th Century).” In Modernity and the Construction of Sacred Space, edited by Aaron French and Katharina Waldner, 77–102. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024.
The Book of Abramelin. Seventeenth-century German and Italian manuscript witnesses to a work generally placed by modern scholarship in an earlier late-medieval/early-modern environment. For the influential English tradition, see S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.
ÉLIPHAS LÉVI AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY OCCULT REVIVAL
Lévi, Éliphas. Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. 2 vols. Paris, 1854–1856.
Lévi, Éliphas. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Translated by Arthur Edward Waite. London: George Redway, 1896.
Otto, Bernd-Christian. “A Catholic ‘Magician’ Historicizes ‘Magic’: Éliphas Lévi’s Histoire de la Magie.” In History and Religion: Narrating a Religious Past, edited by Bernd-Christian Otto, Susanne Rau, and Jörg Rüpke. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015.
GOLDEN DAWN AND ALEISTER CROWLEY
Plaisance, Christopher A. “Magic Made Modern? Re-evaluating the Novelty of the Golden Dawn’s Magic.” Correspondences 2, no. 2 (2014): 159–187.
Regardie, Israel. The Golden Dawn: An Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Vol. 1. Chicago: Aries Press, 1937.
Wheeler, Graham John. “A Microcosm of the Esoteric Revival: The Histories of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.” Correspondences 8, no. 1 (2020): 5–44.
Crowley, Aleister. Book Four, Part II: Magick. 1912–1913. See especially Chapter II, “The Circle.”
Crowley, Aleister. Magick in Theory and Practice. Paris: Lecram Press, 1929.
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, trans.; Aleister Crowley, ed. The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King. 1904.
WICCA AND MODERN WITCHCRAFT
Callow, John. Gerald Gardner and the Creation of Wicca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Davies, Owen. Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
RITUAL, COGNITION, AND EXPERIENCE
Franchetto, Andrea. “Imaginal Architectural Devices and the Ritual Space of Medieval Necromancy.” Endeavour 44, no. 4 (2020): 100748.
Hobson, Nicholas M., Daniel Bonk, and Michael Inzlicht. “Rituals Decrease the Neural Response to Performance Failure.” PeerJ 5 (2017): e3363.
Lang, Martin, Jan Krátký, John H. Shaver, Danijela Jerotijević, and Dimitris Xygalatas. “Effects of Anxiety on Spontaneous Ritualized Behavior.” Current Biology 25, no. 14 (2015): 1892–1897.
Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. “Synchrony and Cooperation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–5.

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Occult Research Institute
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SOURCES / FURTHER READING
Bello, Silvia M. “Cannibalism: A Taphonomic Perspective.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2025.
Pobiner, Briana L., Michael C. Pante, and Trevor Keevil. “Early Pleistocene Cut-Marked Hominin Fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya.” Scientific Reports 13 (2023).
Defleur, Alban, et al. “Neanderthal Cannibalism at Moula-Guercy, Ardèche, France.” Science 286 (1999): 128–131.
Trinkaus, Erik. “Cannibalism and Burial at Krapina.” Journal of Human Evolution 14 (1985).
Rougier, Hélène, et al. “Neandertal Cannibalism and Neandertal Bones Used as Tools in Northern Europe.” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 29005.
Bello, Silvia M., et al. “Upper Palaeolithic Ritualistic Cannibalism at Gough’s Cave.” Journal of Human Evolution 82 (2015): 170–189.
Bello, Silvia M., et al. “An Upper Palaeolithic Engraved Human Bone Associated with Ritualistic Cannibalism.” PLoS ONE 12 (2017): e0182127.
Marsh, William A., and Silvia M. Bello. “Cannibalism and Burial in the Late Upper Palaeolithic.” Quaternary Science Reviews 319 (2023): 108309.
Villa, Paola, et al. “Cannibalism in the Neolithic.” Science 233 (1986): 431–437.
Boulestin, Bruno, et al. “Mass Cannibalism in the Linear Pottery Culture at Herxheim.” Antiquity 83 (2009): 968–982.
Herodotus. Histories, Books I and IV.
Minucius Felix. Octavius.
Tertullian. Apology.
Athenagoras. A Plea for the Christians.
Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum.
Ralph of Caen. Gesta Tancredi.
Staden, Hans. Hans Staden’s True History. 1557.
Léry, Jean de. History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil. 1578.
Thevet, André. Les singularitez de la France antarctique. 1557.
Sugg, Richard. Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires. Routledge, 2011.
Sugg, Richard. “Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern Literature and Culture.” Literature Compass 10 (2013): 825–835.
Chase, Owen. Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. 1821.
Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, Queen’s Bench Division, 1884.
Marlar, Richard A., et al. “Biochemical Evidence of Cannibalism at a Prehistoric Puebloan Site in Southwestern Colorado.” Nature 407 (2000): 74–78.
Turner, Christy G. II, and Jacqueline A. Turner. Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. University of Utah Press, 1999.
Conklin, Beth A. “‘Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom’: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” American Ethnologist 22 (1995): 75–101.
Conklin, Beth A. Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. University of Texas Press, 2001.
Collinge, John, et al. “Kuru in the 21st Century—An Acquired Human Prion Disease with Very Long Incubation Periods.” The Lancet 367 (2006): 2068–2074.
Alpers, Michael P., et al. “The Epidemiology of Kuru: Monitoring the Epidemic from Its Peak to Its End.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2008.
Mead, Simon, et al. “A Novel Protective Prion Protein Variant that Colocalizes with Kuru Exposure.” New England Journal of Medicine 361 (2009): 2056–2065.
Sutton, Donald S. “Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968.” Comparative Studies in Society and History.

Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.

Links For The Occult Rejects
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Occult Research Institute
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Substack
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Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.

Links For The Occult Rejects
https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Occult Research Institute
https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/
Substack
https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page
Cash App
https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects
Venmo
@TheOccultRejects
Patreon
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Primary Source
Sahagún, Bernardino de, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex). Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, 1577. Digital Florentine Codex / Códice Florentino Digital, Getty Research Institute, 2023.
Primary source throughout this episode, especially Book 1 for Tezcatlipoca, Book 2 for festivals and sacrifice, and Book 11 for medicinal and psychoactive plants. Pasted markdown
Nahua Performance, Ritual & Manuscripts
Brylak, Agnieszka. “Some Remarks on the Teponazcuicatl of the Pre-Hispanic Nahua.” Ancient Mesoamerica 27, no. 2 (2016).
Used for Nahua song, drumming, movement, and embodied ritual performance.
Morado Hernández, Elías Israel. “Una aproximación al Códice florentino desde la escucha.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 47, no. 127 (2025).
Explores the audible, oral, rhythmic, and performative world preserved beneath the written Florentine Codex.
Dupey García, Élodie. “Rethinking the Reverse of the Codex Cospi: Ritual Offerings to Divine Effigies in Temples.” Ancient Mesoamerica (2026).
Important to the discussion of divinatory manuscripts as ritual technologies connecting interpretation with prescribed ritual action. Pasted markdown
Tezcatlipoca, Obsidian Mirrors & John Dee
Campbell, Stuart, Elizabeth Healey, Yaroslav Kuzmin, and Michael D. Glascock. “The Mirror, the Magus and More: Reflections on John Dee’s Obsidian Mirror.” Antiquity 95, no. 384 (2021): 1547–1564.
doi: 10.15184/aqy.2021.132
Geochemical analysis connecting John Dee’s obsidian mirror with Mexican obsidian from the Pachuca source.
Getty Research Institute. “Through the Mirror.” Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology.
Background on Indigenous Mexican obsidian mirrors, divination, supernatural vision, and Tezcatlipoca.
Caputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion.” Perception 39, no. 7 (2010): 1007–1008.
doi: 10.1068/p6466
Experimental study showing striking facial distortions during prolonged mirror gazing under dim illumination.
Mash, Joanna, Paul M. Jenkinson, Charlotte E. Dean, and Keith R. Laws. “Strange Face Illusions: A Systematic Review and Quality Analysis.” Consciousness and Cognition 109 (2023): 103480.
doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103480
Systematic review of strange-face illusions and the methodological limits of earlier mirror-gazing research. Pasted markdown
Ololiuhqui & Ergoline Chemistry
Meira, Marilena, Eliezer Pereira da Silva, Jorge M. David, and Juceni P. David. “Review of the Genus Ipomoea: Traditional Uses, Chemistry and Biological Activities.” Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia 22, no. 3 (2012).
doi: 10.1590/S0102-695X2012005000025
Reviews morning-glory chemistry, including ergoline alkaloids such as ergine/LSA.
Steiner, Ulrike, and Eckhard Leistner. “Ergoline Alkaloids in Convolvulaceous Host Plants Originate from Epibiotic Clavicipitaceous Fungi of the Genus Periglandula.” Fungal Ecology 5, no. 3 (2012): 316–321.
doi: 10.1016/j.funeco.2011.04.004
Important for the plant–fungus symbiosis involved in ergoline production associated with Turbina corymbosa. Pasted markdown
Peyote & Mescaline
Dinis-Oliveira, Ricardo Jorge, Carolina Lança Pereira, and Diana Dias da Silva. “Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Aspects of Peyote and Mescaline: Clinical and Forensic Repercussions.” Current Molecular Pharmacology 12, no. 3 (2019): 184–194.
doi: 10.2174/1874467211666181010154139
Carstairs, Shaun D., and F. Lee Cantrell. “Peyote and Mescaline Exposures: A 12-Year Review of a Statewide Poison Center Database.” Clinical Toxicology 48, no. 4 (2010): 350–353.
doi: 10.3109/15563650903586745
These sources support the episode’s discussion of mescaline pharmacology, perceptual effects, and autonomic responses. Pasted markdown
Psilocybin & Visual Processing
Stoliker, Devon, Katrin H. Preller, Leonardo Novelli, Alan Anticevic, Gary F. Egan, Franz X. Vollenweider, Adeel Razi, et al. “Neural Mechanisms of Psychedelic Visual Imagery.” Molecular Psychiatry 30 (2025): 1259–1266. Published online 2024.
doi: 10.1038/s41380-024-02632-3
Used for the discussion of altered visual-network connectivity and increased top-down contributions to psychedelic imagery. Pasted markdown
Datura & Anticholinergic Delirium
Vearrier, David, and Michael I. Greenberg. “Anticholinergic Delirium Following Datura stramonium Ingestion: Implications for the Internet Age.” Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock 3, no. 3 (2010): 303.
doi: 10.4103/0974-2700.66565
Used to distinguish potentially dangerous anticholinergic delirium from classical serotonergic psychedelic states. Pasted markdown
Yiauhtli / Tagetes lucida
Pérez-Ortega, G., M. E. González-Trujano, G. E. Ángeles-López, F. Brindis, H. Vibrans, and R. Reyes-Chilpa. “Tagetes lucida Cav.: Ethnobotany, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Its Tranquilizing Properties.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 181 (2016): 221–228.
doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2016.01.040
Supports discussion of anxiolytic and sedative-like effects while cautioning against automatically classifying yiauhtli as a powerful psychedelic. Pasted markdown
Tobacco, Pulque & Copal
Benowitz, Neal L. “Pharmacology of Nicotine: Addiction, Smoking-Induced Disease, and Therapeutics.” Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology 49 (2009): 57–71.
doi: 10.1146/annurev.pharmtox.48.113006.094742
Used for nicotine’s action at nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and its effects on attention, arousal, reward, and autonomic function.
Kumar, Sandeep, Patrizia Porcu, David F. Werner, Douglas B. Matthews, Jaime L. Diaz-Granados, Rebecca S. Helfand, and A. Leslie Morrow. “The Role of GABA(A) Receptors in the Acute and Chronic Effects of Ethanol: A Decade of Progress.” Psychopharmacology 205, no. 4 (2009): 529–564.
doi: 10.1007/s00213-009-1562-z
Used for ethanol’s effects on GABAergic signaling. The Florentine Codex supplies the historical evidence for picietl/tobacco, octli/pulque, and copal in ceremonial settings. Pasted markdown
Sleep Deprivation & Altered Perception
Waters, Flavie, Vivian Chiu, Amanda Atkinson, and Jan Dirk Blom. “Severe Sleep Deprivation Causes Hallucinations and a Gradual Progression Toward Psychosis With Increasing Time Awake.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 9 (2018): 303.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00303
Used for evidence that sufficiently prolonged wakefulness can produce perceptual distortions, hallucinations, and increasingly disordered cognition. This does not establish that ordinary Nahua vigils automatically produced hallucinations. Pasted markdown
Breathing, Emotion & Brain Rhythms
Ashhad, Sufyan, Kaiwen Kam, Christopher A. Del Negro, and Jack L. Feldman. “Breathing Rhythm and Pattern and Their Influence on Emotion.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 45 (2022): 223–247.
doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-090121-014424
Used for the relationship between respiratory rhythms, emotion, cognition, brainstem regulation, and distributed neural activity. Pasted markdown
Ritual, Pain, Memory & Cultural Neuroscience
Seligman, Rebecca, and Ryan A. Brown. “Theory and Method at the Intersection of Anthropology and Cultural Neuroscience.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5, nos. 2–3 (2010): 130–137.
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsp032
Provides theoretical background for examining ritual as an embodied process involving sensory stimulation, emotional arousal, pain, memory, expectation, and social meaning. Pasted markdown
Human Sacrifice & Bioarchaeology
Moreiras Reynaga, Diana K., Jean-François Millaire, Ximena Chávez Balderas, Juan A. Román Berrelleza, Leonardo López Luján, and Fred J. Longstaffe. “Residential Patterns of Mexica Human Sacrifices at Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Mexico-Tlatelolco: Evidence from Phosphate Oxygen Isotopes.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 62 (2021): 101296.
doi: 10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101296
Oxygen-isotope evidence indicates a diverse population among sacrificial individuals, including locals, long-term residents, and non-locals, adding archaeological context to discussions of warfare, captive-taking, slavery, imperial networks, and religious sacrifice. Pasted markdown
Nahua Death & Otherworlds
Madajczak, Julia, Katarzyna Mikulska, and Roberto Martínez. “Beyond Mictlan: The Otherworlds of the Pre-Contact Nahua.” Ancient Mesoamerica 37, no. 1 (2026): 114–130.
doi: 10.1017/S0956536126100911
A major reassessment of the traditional “Sahaguntine paradigm” of Nahua afterlife destinations. The authors argue for understanding Nahua otherworlds as relational and transformational domains rather than simply fixed locations on a supernatural map, including an important reinterpretation of the numbers eight and nine. Pasted markdown
Nahualism, Personhood & Ritual Specialists
Martínez González, Roberto. El nahualismo. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2016. Antropológica 19.
Important for nahualli traditions, transformation, distributed personhood, tonalli, and other animating or supernatural relationships.
López Austin, Alfredo. “Cuarenta clases de magos del mundo náhuatl.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 7 (1967): 87–117.
Foundational for understanding the divers

Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.