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"The Hermetic Library is the creation of Al Billings and is his attempt to find a place to host his creations and those of others that would not otherwise be available. These creations are, by and large, of a spiritual focus but not the areas of spirituality that you will generally see within the mainstream of American culture." Crowley, Spare, Bey…
"Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. Many different languages available in many different formats.
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"a digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The book collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books with 19th century imprints." All books are scanned from the originals. Large choice, fully searchable database; OCR versions available.
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"Welcome to the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet. The site is dedicated to religious tolerance and scholarship, and has the largest readership of any similar site on the web."
"Une bibliothèque hétéroclite. MISCELLANÉES n. m. pl., (miscellanea : choses mêlées, miscere : mêler) Recueil de différents ouvrages de science, de littérature, qui n'ont quelquefois aucun rapport entre eux. Cet auteur a donné d'excellents miscellanées. On dit plus ordinairement, Mélanges. On dit aussi quelquefois, Miscellanea." Excellent site with some very strange texts. In French.
Online version of the British Library. Lots of illustrated books as well, in flash format.
"The enigmatic, polyglot Hypnerotomachia Poliphili -- the inspiration for the bestselling novel The Rule of Four -- has fascinated architects and historians since its publication in 1499. Part fictional narrative and part scholarly treatise, richly illustrated with wood engravings, the book is an extreme case of erotic furor, aimed at everything -- especially architecture -- that the protagonist, Poliphilo, encounters in his quest for his beloved, Polia. Among the instances of the book's manifesto-like character is Polia's tirade defending the right of women to express their own sexuality, probably the first sustained argument of this type, which lifts the book's erotic theme from the realm of ribaldry to the more daring one of sexual politics. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most unreadable books ever published. The first inkling of difficulty occurs at the moment one picks up the book and tries to utter its tongue-twisting, practically unpronounceable title. The difficulty only heightens as one flips through the pages and tries to decipher the strange, baffling, inscrutable prose, replete with recondite references, teeming with tortuous terminology, choked with pulsating, prolix, plethoric passages. Now in Tuscan, now in Latin, now in Greek –elsewhere in Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and hieroglyphs – the author has created a pandemonium of unruly sentences that demand the unrelenting skills of a prodigiously endowed polyglot in order to be understood. One of the woodcuts the reader comes across early in the book is of an unbridled winged steed, charging headlong at full gallop, ears drawn back, head twisted sideways, bucking the unlucky riders who try in vain to cling to its back and mane. The image might serve as an emblem for the whole work. At times even the most devoted reader cannot help feeling bewildered when looking down in this frenetic, fantastic specimen of whirling linguistic furore, hurling great semantic dust clouds into the air as it kicks and reels and pitches along on its impetuous course."
allows to search a book and offers some pages in PDF depending on the copyright; some books can be fully downloaded. Might OCR for portions of scanned text.
Free e-books on entheogenic and psychedelic topics from LSD - My Problem Child to The Secret Chief.
"The Electronic Literature Directory is a unique and valuable resource for readers and writers of digital texts. It provides an extensive database of listings for electronic works, their authors, and their publishers. The descriptive entries cover poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction that make significant use of electronic techniques or enhancements. The ELD provides easy access to one of the most exciting and fastest-growing bodies of cutting-edge literature. Among the new forms of writing represented here are hypertexts and other interactive pieces, animated poems, multimedia works, generated texts, and works that allow reader collaboration. ELD users can also enjoy the enhancements that the new technology brings to traditional literature, such as streaming audio readings of poetry by masters ranging from e.e. cummings and Dylan Thomas to contemporary Pulitzer Prize winners." Large collection of free texts, of which many interactive hypertexts.
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Free E-books from some of the world's greatest kooks. To read online or to download. Fous littéraires.
Through its vast collection of screen caps and its growing archive of Little Movies, ABOL transports members from Rob Reiner's Princess Bride to Stuart Urban's Preaching to the Perverted, from Fellini's Satyricon to Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, from John Waters' Hairspray to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. ABOL's collection of screenplays spans from Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, to Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, to Richard Linklater's Waking Life. ABOL's got biographies of artists, authors, and political figures from Lewis Carroll to Joey Ramone, famous works like Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, complete with current commentary. It's all a little like The Garden of Forking Paths described by Jorge Luis Borges, or the fortress of the Goblin King in Jim Henson's cinematic tour de force, Labyrinth.
Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason is a landmark text in the field of psychedelic study. Written by James Kent, former Editor of Psychedelic Illuminations and Publisher of Trip Magazine, Psychedelic Information Theory spans the chasm between science and mysticsm and fully deconstructs the magic of the psychedelic experience in a way that promises to satisfy both skeptics and true believers alike. James Kent has been studying psychedelics, mysticism, neuroscience, and psychedelic culture for over 15 years, and now presents the culmination of his research in one epic volume. In addition to the most complete neurologic deconstruction of various psychedelic mind states ever compiled, Kent also provides an exhaustive analysis of the way information is generated within the psychedelic state, and how that information transcends the personal mind and influences human culture at large. Contains lots of chapters online.