1880-1929

Further reading

The books the places and their stories come from, and those that let you go further.

• Tobias Churton, Aleister Crowley in Paris: Sex, Art, and Magick in the City of Light, Inner Traditions, 2022.

  The main source for this map: Crowley’s Paris years, address by address, with the artists, the lovers and the magical operations.

• Tobias Churton, Occult Paris: The Lost Magic of the Belle Époque, Inner Traditions, 2016.

  The book behind the thirty places of occult Paris: the esoteric bookshops, salons, magi and musicians of the Belle Époque, from Bailly to Satie.

• Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, North Atlantic Books, revised edition, 2010.

  The standard biography, thoroughly documented, with a precise chronology that makes it possible to date most of the stays.

• Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

  A balanced and readable biography, as attentive to the literary work as to the magic.

• Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, 1969.

  His “autohagiography”: lively and invaluable, but to be read with some distance, as Crowley often arranges the facts in his own favour.

• Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.

  The history of the Golden Dawn based on its archives, including the 1900 crisis and Mathers’s role in Paris.

• Mary K. Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn, Park Street Press, 1995.

  Four women of the Order, including Moina Mathers: the best way into the Matherses’ Paris and the Rites of Isis.

• Ithell Colquhoun, Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn, Neville Spearman, 1975.

  A biography of Mathers by a Surrealist painter and occultist, rich in first-hand accounts.

• Jacques Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1963.

  For the history of every street and every building: the essential tool for finding old addresses.