c. 2100 BCE
Sumerian temple hymns and incantations
Hymns and incantation texts addressing the great gods of Sumer by name and epithet, the oldest written prayers of contact.
Recreated in the appAnunnaki
Every rite on this site is rebuilt from a text that survives: tablets, papyri, scriptures, grimoires, monastic rules, and the modern research on the states they produce. This is the full list, ordered by the world each text comes from, with the recreations built on it.
Hymns and incantation texts addressing the great gods of Sumer by name and epithet, the oldest written prayers of contact.
Recreated in the appAnunnaki
An Assyrian ritual tablet for forming, placing and naming protective figures of the seven apkallu sages about a house.
Recreated in the appAPKALLU
Prayers to the gods of the night sky and the planets, the root of later planetary magic.
Recreated in the appCelestial Above · Celestial Veil
Funerary and liturgical spells carved in royal tombs and painted on coffins: the oldest religious corpus of Egypt.
Recreated in the appEgyptian Gods
The service by which the god in the shrine was woken, purified, clothed and fed each day.
Recreated in the appEgyptian Gods
Hymns invoking the gods by epithet, lineage and sanctuary, the model of the Greek invocation.
Recreated in the appGreek Gods
Eighty-seven hymns, each paired with its own incense, sung to call a specific god.
Recreated in the appGreek Gods
Working handbooks of Greco-Egyptian magicians: invocations, vowel chants, seals and rites of direct encounter.
Recreated in the appGreek Gods
Inscriptions at the sanctuary of Asclepius recording dreams and cures received by sleeping petitioners.
Recreated in the appAsclepion
A traveller’s description of the sanctuaries, and a patient’s own record of years of dreams from Asclepius.
Recreated in the appAsclepion
The Neoplatonic ascent from body to soul to Intellect to the One.
Recreated in the appThe One
Jewish mystical texts describing the ascent through seven palaces, the gatekeepers, the seals, the names and the hymns.
Recreated in the appHekhalot: The Seven Palaces
The ascent of Rabbi Ishmael and the transformation of Enoch into the angel Metatron.
Recreated in the appHekhalot: The Seven Palaces
The prophet’s vision of the chariot-throne, the root of all Merkavah mysticism.
Recreated in the appMerkavah: Ezekiel’s Chariot
The Book of Formation: creation from the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters.
Recreated in the appSefer Yetzirah: Letters
Gnostic library found in Egypt in 1945, including the Apocryphon of John and the Gospel of Truth: the Pleroma, the aeons and the archons.
Recreated in the appThe Pleroma
Solomon’s ring and seal, and the demons he bound to build the Temple.
Recreated in the appDjin Invocation
The monks of the Egyptian desert and the first instructions for the prayer of the heart.
Recreated in the appPresence
The monastic rule that divided the day into the canonical hours of prayer.
Recreated in the appJesus Hour by Hour
The founding texts of Taoism: the Way, emptiness, stillness and the fasting of the heart.
Recreated in the appThe Way
The Buddha’s discourses, including the instructions on breath and the jhānas.
Recreated in the appMiddle Way
The great vehicle’s teachings on emptiness and awakening.
Recreated in the appMiddle Way
The Vedic teachings on ātman and brahman and the four states of consciousness.
Recreated in the appThe Witness
The great systematiser of Advaita Vedanta, the teaching of non-duality.
Recreated in the appThe Witness
Forty-eight Zen koans compiled by Wumen Huikai, opening with Joshu’s Mu.
Recreated in the appEmpty Gate
The Stoic exercises of the inner citadel and the logos within.
Recreated in the appThe Inner Citadel
The Hermetic writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus: as above, so below.
Recreated in the appThe Great Work
The great Arabic manual of astral magic: facing the planet in its hour and drawing down its virtue.
Recreated in the appDjin Invocation · Celestial Above
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon: the order that gave the week its days and every rite its hour.
Recreated in the appArs Astrorum
The Norse myths and the Hávamál, where Odin wins the runes.
Recreated in the appNorse Gods
The twenty-four runes of the oldest runic alphabet.
Recreated in the appNorse Gods · ORACLE
The central work of Kabbalah and the doctrine of the sefirot.
Recreated in the appTree of Life
An anonymous English guide to imageless prayer beneath the cloud of forgetting.
Recreated in the appThe Cloud
Writings of the hesychasts on the Jesus Prayer and the prayer of the heart.
Recreated in the appPresence
The angels of the days and hours, and how to address them in their time.
Recreated in the appAngelarium · Celestial Veil
Five books of spirit and angel operations, including the Goetia and the Ars Paulina.
Recreated in the appSolomonic
The angels and seals of the twenty-four hours and of the degrees of the zodiac.
Recreated in the appAngelarium · Celestial Veil
The classic grimoire of the circle, the pentacles and the conjurations.
Recreated in the appSolomonic
The Renaissance summa of natural, celestial and ceremonial magic.
Recreated in the appCelestial Veil
The record of the angelic sessions and the forty-eight Calls in the angelic language.
Recreated in the appEnochian Calls
The Safed masters of Kabbalah: the Tree mapped in full, and the Four Worlds.
Recreated in the appTree of Life · Four Worlds
Field reports from Siberia, the Americas and beyond describing the same rite of drum, journey and return.
Recreated in the appShaman
The masters, the rays and the decree.
Recreated in the appAscended Masters
Research on binaural sound and staged states of consciousness, later assessed for the Army.
Recreated in the appOBE Induction
Group procedures for signalling from meditation, and the star-tetrahedron visualisation.
Recreated in the appThe Signal
Increased frontal-midline theta and decreased alpha in experienced meditators.
Informsthe coming EEG editions
Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during practice.
Informsthe coming EEG editions
A systematic review of EEG studies of mindfulness meditation; increased theta and alpha are the most consistent findings.
Informsthe coming EEG editions
Recreations of historical practices, built from their sources. What the sources describe is reported as their claim.