I am now an experienced Ceremonial Magician. However, when I was fourteen years old myself, I got turned on to the occult not through reading occult books per se, but through Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, and the fiction of H P Lovecraft.
This is not so crazy as it may sound, since because Call of Cthulhu is based in a fictionalised version of the real world, the creators actually included a lot of historical data of real-life occult organisations and personalities such as Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Israel Regardie, the Golden Dawn, etc. Because this piqued my interest, I remembered them when I came to researching the occult seriously when I was older.
Indeed, several serious occultists I know claimed that they were first inspired to take up the dark arts after reading Dennis Wheatley novels. Dennis Wheatley actually met Aleister Crowley, although he was a bit of a hypocrite in that he told his readers not to get into the occult real-life, as it was a sure path to be enmeshed by the powers of darkness, etc.
So yeah, if you do your research, you will probably find that a lot of fiction is inspired by genuine occultism. A lot however is not. The one thing I would advise against doing is watching The Irregulars. This is probably one of the worst programmes out there when it comes to historical accuracy about occultism. Or about the Sherlock Holmes universe. Or indeed about life in Victorian England generally.
(NB: if you are on Netflix and you want to watch something decent about the occult, try The Midnight Gospel instead).
The Irregulars. Not as authentic as The Midnight Gospel
Source: Alex Sumner’s answer to How and where could I start to practice Magick? (14 years old) – Quora
Whilst on the subject of Wicca, another FB fan, Philip Dean Fox, recommends 
and 
. Meanwhile, another FB friend, Adrien, recommends Christopher Penczak’s 
.
Oliver St John recommends 
” and Crowley’s “
” are useless to a complete beginner. I would recommend getting a grounding in at least the basics of astrology and setting up a horoscope. It amazes me how many occultists don’t know the first thing about astrology.
Indeed! Several months ago I gave myself the task of doing a short ten-minute talk to members of a highly secretive branch of the Illuminati (nb: they are not secretive at all! They just don’t want it publicly known that they have a scruff like me as one of their members!) outlining a number of basic reference works for people who might, for all I know, be complete beginners to the mysteries. I remember that many years ago I read a remark by Israel Regardie about the first Knowledge Lecture of the Golden Dawn, recommending to just get any old book on astrology to look up basic terms thereon – so that is exactly what I did, and what I recommended in turn to the members of this order. As it happens, when I went into Waterstones that fateful day, the first book on the subject which I picked up was 
, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy;
, by Israel Regardie (edited by Chic & Tabatha Cicero);
;
; and
.
, by C W Leadbeater; and
, by Ophiel.
in 1904, it was in fact in circulation amongst the Adepti of the original Golden Dawn, i.e. Isis-Urania Temple – thus indicating that it was yet another GD teaching that Crowley half-inched.
constructed a Z2 Spiritual Development ritual based around the Bornless Ritual – however, when comparing this to the original GD manuscripts which I have seen it is clear that Regardie’s approach is overly sophisticated. The Adepti of the original GD would in fact simply perform the ritual without adornment – save that at key-points, they would make the Kerubic Sigils with their elemental tools. Moreover the version circulated within the original GD retains the correct spellings of the “Barbarous Names of Evocation” which unfortunately Regardie’s version does not have. (I mention this because one of the themes with which I was concerned when I wrote about the Bornless Ritual previously was the “Barbarous Names” may well have significance in terms of Isopsephos, i.e. Greek Gematria).
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
The Welsh Occult Conference 2025
Today and for the next few days I will be releasing a series of blog posts inspired by my adventures at the Welsh Occult Conference, held on Saturday 17th May 2025 at Gregynog Hall, in Powys, Wales – just over the border from Shropshire.
In brief: I enjoyed it immensely, so much so that I would want to return in future, even if I am not one of the speakers as I was this year.
All credit must go to the organisers, Gary St Michael Nottingham and Leslie Jackson, whom both my fiancée and I would like to thank not just for inviting me to take part, but for their generosity and hospitality generally.
There were over a hundred people there, some from as far away as Canada and Malta. One lady even came up to me and told me she had come to the conference purely to hear me speak!
Gary himself talked about Israel Regardie and Alchemy, illustrating the kind of thing up to which Regardie would have got with examples from his own Alchemical practice.
Meanwhile, I spoke about Abramelin: whilst after lunch, Carrie Kirkpatrick spoke about her forthcoming film “World War Witches”; Elaine Bailey talked about Anna Bonus Kingsford; Anne Turner talked about her parents Robert and Patricia Turner, leading members of the Order of the Cubic Stone; and Geraldine Beskin talked about Annie Horniman.
Stephen Skinner in the end did not attend in person, but recorded a talk which was played to the conference. This really annoyed me, as I had brought all my Stephen Skinner books with me in the hope he would autograph them – only to get the message that he had taken ill after we had set out for Wales!
As well as friends whom I already knew well, I was fortunate to meet a number of Facebook Friends for the first time! As well as many others whom I rarely get to see in the flesh.
Finally I would like to thank my fiancée as well – especially as she did all the driving this weekend. I did offer, but for some reason she thought it would be safer if she was behind the wheel instead of me.
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Tagged as Abramelin, Alchemy, Anna Kingsford, israel regardie, Order of the Cubic Stone, Stephen Skinner, wales