Audio Library

The library of the Royal Art in audible form

THE ONE GOSPEL - A harmonized gospel narrative that weaves the four canonical gospels with Thomas, Mary, and other apocryphal material into one continuous story — with repetition removed and the chronological flow restored

NRSV (scholarly standard, accurate, readable) or the David Bentley Hart translation (the New Testament rendered by a single scholar-theologian who prioritizes fidelity to the Greek over English fluency. For Thomas and the other Nag Hammadi texts, the Marvin Meyer translations are the current standard. For the Gospel of Mary, Karen King's edition is definitive.

I.  SACRED SCRIPTURE

• A Course in Miracles — full text — CE edition

II.  THE CHRISTIC CANON

The Gospels

• The One Gospel — all four canonical gospels + apocryphal material synthesized into one chronological narrative
• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of Mary

+  The Gospel of Philip 

+  The Secret Gospel of Mark 

The Apocalypse

• The Book of Revelation

Gnostic Scriptures

• Pistis Sophia — excerpts or full
• Thunder, Perfect Mind

+  The Hymn of the Pearl  —  Acts of Thomas

+  The Gospel of Truth 

+  On the Origin of the World 

+  Trimorphic Protennoia 

Christian Mysticism

• Excerpts from the Christian Mystics — Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, Dionysius the Areopagite, etc.

III.  THE HEBREW CANON

Old Testament

• Song of Songs
• Psalms
• Old Testament Books & Excerpts — Genesis creation narratives, Exodus, selected Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Job, Proverbs, Daniel, etc…

+  Ecclesiastes  — the philosopher-king's meditation on vanity and wisdom

Kabbalah

• Sepher Yetzirah
• Zohar — excerpts
• Kabbalistic Texts — selected

+  The Bahir  —  earliest Kabbalistic text, symbolism of the Sephiroth and the Tree

Rabbinic & Folk

• Legends of the Jews — Louis Ginzberg — excerpts
• Hasidic Tales — selected

IV.  THE HERMETIC CANON

Core Hermetica

• The Emerald Tablet
• Corpus Hermeticum — full text or selected tractates
• Asclepius
• The Divine Pymander

Neoplatonic & Theurgic

• Iamblichus — On the Mysteries
• Chaldean Oracles — fragments
• Plato — selected dialogues — Symposium, Timaeus, Phaedrus, Republic (Cave allegory, Allegory of the Sun, Allegory of the Divided Line)
• Neoplatonist Texts — Plotinus (Enneads excerpts), Proclus
• Pythagoras — Golden Verses
• The Orphic Hymns — full collection
• The Homeric Hymns — selected

+  Plotinus — Enneads  —  selected tractates, especially On Beauty (I.6) and On the Good (VI.9)

+  Proclus — Elements of Theology  —  the systematic capstone of Neoplatonism

V.  ALCHEMY, ASTROLOGY & MAGIC

Alchemy

• Alchemy Texts & Pictures — Splendor Solis, Rosarium Philosophorum, Mutus Liber descriptions, selected treatises
• Paracelsus — excerpts

+  The Book of Lambspring 

+  The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine 

Astrology

• Ptolemy — Tetrabiblos — excerpts

Magic & Grimoires

• Agrippa — Three Books of Occult Philosophy — excerpts
• Magical Grimoires — selected
• Picatrix — excerpts
• The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage — excerpts

+  The Key of Solomon  —  excerpts

+  The Arbatel of Magic  —

VI.  THE ROSICRUCIAN & MASONIC TRADITION

• The Three Rosicrucian Manifestos — Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
• Robert Fludd — excerpts
• Eliphas Levi — excerpts — Transcendental Magic, The Key of the Mysteries

+  The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians 

VII.  THE GRAIL & ARTHURIAN CANON

• Arthurian Stories, Excerpts & Holy Grail Legends — selected

+  Wolfram von Eschenbach — Parzival  —  excerpts — the supreme Grail text, the Grail as Stone (lapis exillis)

+  Chrétien de Troyes — Perceval  —  the original Grail romance, unfinished

+  The Quest of the Holy Grail  —  Vulgate Cycle — Galahad's quest, the Siege Perilous, the achievement of the Grail

+  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  —  full text — initiatory testing, the Green Man, the pentangle

+  Malory — Le Morte d'Arthur  —  selected books — especially the Grail quest and the death of Arthur

VIII.  THE MODERN ESOTERIC TRADITION

• Manly P. Hall — The Secret Teachings of All Ages — excerpts
• Aleister Crowley — selected — Liber AL, selected essays and invocations
• Julius Evola — excerpts
• René Guénon — excerpts

IX.  THE GREAT EPICS & CLASSICAL LITERATURE

Ancient Near East

• The Epic of Gilgamesh — full text or major excerpts
• Enuma Elish — Babylonian creation epic
• The Descent of Inanna — full text

Greek & Roman

• Homer — excerpts — or eventually the full Odyssey and/or Iliad
• Ovid — Metamorphoses — excerpts or full
• Greek Myth Stories — selected retellings

+  Hesiod — Theogony & Works and Days  —  Greek cosmogony and the ages of man

+  Virgil — Aeneid  —  excerpts — especially the descent to the underworld (Book VI)

+  Apuleius — The Golden Ass  —  the Isis initiation sequence — the only surviving ancient mystery initiation narrative

Medieval & Renaissance

• Dante — The Divine Comedy — full text or major excerpts
• John Milton — Paradise Lost — full text or major excerpts
• Shakespeare — excerpts — The Tempest, selected sonnets, soliloquies

Modern Epic

• J.R.R. Tolkien —

X.  THE POET’S TOWER

Western Poets

• Khalil Gibran — The Prophet and others
• William Blake — selected — Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence and Experience, Jerusalem excerpts, Proverbs of Hell
• Rainer Maria Rilke — Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus
• Walt Whitman — Song of Myself, selected from Leaves of Grass

+  W.B. Yeats  —  selected mystical poems — The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, The Tower

+  T.S. Eliot — Four Quartets  —  the supreme modern mystical poem in English — especially East Coker and Little Gidding

Sufi & Persian Poets

• Rumi — selected — use Mojaddedi (Masnavi) or Arberry, not Barks
• Hafez — selected — Dick Davis translation
• Persian Sufi Mystical Poets — Attar, Sa'di, Sanai, others

+  Attar — The Conference of the Birds  —  excerpts — the seven valleys of the soul's quest for the divine King

+  Ibn Arabi  —  selected poems and passages from the Bezels of Wisdom or Meccan Revelations

Indian & Eastern Poets

• Kabir — selected — Mehrotra translation preferred

+  Mirabai  —  devotional poetry of the divine beloved

+  Tagore  —  selected from Gitanjali

XI.  THE EASTERN GATE

Taoist

• Tao Te Ching — full text
• I Ching — full text or selected hexagrams with commentary

+  Chuang Tzu  —  selected chapters

Buddhist & Zen

• Zen Sutras — Faith Mind Sutra (Xinxin Ming) — full text
• Indian Sutras — selected
• Ashtakra Gita
• Yoga Sutras
• Avuda Gita

+  The Heart Sutra 

+  The Diamond Sutra  —  full text or excerpts

+  The Dhammapada 

+  The Platform Sutra of Hui-Neng 

Hindu

+  The Bhagavad Gita  —  full text — the warrior's scripture, Arjuna's initiation, Krishna's revelation. Essential.

+  The Upanishads  —  selected — especially Isha, Kena, Katha, Mandukya

XII.  TEACHING STORIES & WISDOM TALES

• Mulla Nasreddin Stories — selected
• Hasidic Tales — selected
• Idries Shah — Tales of the Dervishes  —  Sufi teaching stories curated for Western readers

Possible

+  Aesop's Fables  —  selected — the original Western wisdom tales

+  Desert Fathers — Sayings of the Desert Fathers  —  selected — apophthegmata, the earliest Christian monastic wisdom

+  The Philokalia  —  selected passages — Eastern Orthodox contemplative tradition, the prayer of the heart

+  Theologia Germanica  —  anonymous 14th-century mystical treatise, beloved by Luther and the Rosicrucians

+  The Aesch-Mezareph  —  Kabbalistic alchemy —

+  Dion Fortune — The Mystical Qabalah  —  excerpts — the clearest modern Kabbalistic primer from a practitioner

+  W.B. Yeats  —  selected poems and passages from A Vision — poet-magician of the Golden Dawn

+  Israel Regardie — The Golden Dawn  —  selected ritual texts — the operative backbone of modern ceremonial magic

+  Gerard Manley Hopkins  —  selected poems — the most ecstatic Christian poet in English after Blake

+  Novalis — Hymns to the Night  —  German Romantic mysticism, the divine feminine, the night as revelation