100 books like The Ever-Present Origin

By Jean Gebser, Noel Barstad (translator), Algis Mickunas (translator)

Here are 100 books that The Ever-Present Origin fans have personally recommended if you like The Ever-Present Origin. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga

Daniel Pinchbeck Author Of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

From my list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career as a New York magazine editor and cynical journalist writing about art, celebrities, and show designers. Eventually I had an existential meltdown where I realized I was trapped in reductive materialism. I didn’t believe in a soul or a spirit or anything that wasn’t tangible. I decided to explore psychedelics and wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, after visiting indigenous cultures in Africa and South America where I took Iboga, ayahuasca, and mushrooms in initiation ceremonies. I learned we are facing an ecological and geo-political meta-crisis. I tried to find the roots of this, hoping to save humanity from extinction by unifying us around a mystical realization of oneness. 

Daniel's book list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse

Daniel Pinchbeck Why did Daniel love this book?

An Italian aristocrat who led a magical order in the 1920s, Evola is a fascinating and controversial figure who has become influential in the New Right. Even though I am a Leftist, I find many of his ideas important and helpful—along with his fellow “traditionalists.” Rene Guenon and Fritjof Schuon. Evola believes we are in a period of accelerating decline known as the Kali Yuga, the age of iron and materialism, where the true spiritual knowledge has been almost entirely lost. He argues there is no way to stop the destruction of this civilization and it is best to focus on self-transformation through alchemical and magical practices. His books on Buddhism, eroticism, tantra, and alchemy are also fascinating! 

By Julius Evola,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Revolt Against the Modern World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No idea is as absurd as the idea of progress, which together with its corollary notion of the superiority of modern civilization, has created its own "positive" alibis by falsifying history, by insinuating harmful myths in people's minds, and by proclaiming itself sovereign at the crossroads of the plebeian ideology from which it originated. In order to understand both the spirit of Tradition and its antithesis, modern civilization, it is necessary to begin with the fundamental doctrine of the two natures. According to this doctrine there is a physical order of things and a metaphysical one; there is a mortal…


Book cover of An Outline of Esoteric Science

Daniel Pinchbeck Author Of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

From my list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career as a New York magazine editor and cynical journalist writing about art, celebrities, and show designers. Eventually I had an existential meltdown where I realized I was trapped in reductive materialism. I didn’t believe in a soul or a spirit or anything that wasn’t tangible. I decided to explore psychedelics and wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, after visiting indigenous cultures in Africa and South America where I took Iboga, ayahuasca, and mushrooms in initiation ceremonies. I learned we are facing an ecological and geo-political meta-crisis. I tried to find the roots of this, hoping to save humanity from extinction by unifying us around a mystical realization of oneness. 

Daniel's book list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse

Daniel Pinchbeck Why did Daniel love this book?

Founder of Waldorf Schools and Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner was the greatest occult seer and philosopher of the modern age. His ideas about spirituality changed my world when I discovered him while researching my first book on psychedelic shamanism. In this book, he takes us through our cosmic history. He reveals that we currently possess four “bodies” (the physical, astral, etheric, and the I), and we are developing a fifth (the “spirit self”). He explores reincarnation, both of each of us individually and of the Earth as a whole. He explains that there are different super-sensible beings that work upon us all of the time, and that one of them, Ahirman, is destined to incarnate in this century. A fantastic inquiry into the deepest mysteries with practical advice for today. 

By Rudolf Steiner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked An Outline of Esoteric Science as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Written in 1909 (CW 13)


"Esoteric science is the science of what takes place esoterically, in the sense that it is perceived not outside in nature but where one’s soul turns when it directs its inner being toward the spirit. Esoteric science is the opposite and counterpart of natural science." ―Rudolf Steiner


This masterwork of esotericism places humankind at the very heart of the vast, invisible processes of cosmic evolution. When we use the term “natural science,” don’t we mean that we are dealing with human knowledge of nature?


Steiner worked and reworked his Rosicrucian cosmology to make it increasingly…


Book cover of Archetype of the Apocalypse: Divine Vengeance, Terrorism, and the End of the World

Daniel Pinchbeck Author Of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

From my list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career as a New York magazine editor and cynical journalist writing about art, celebrities, and show designers. Eventually I had an existential meltdown where I realized I was trapped in reductive materialism. I didn’t believe in a soul or a spirit or anything that wasn’t tangible. I decided to explore psychedelics and wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, after visiting indigenous cultures in Africa and South America where I took Iboga, ayahuasca, and mushrooms in initiation ceremonies. I learned we are facing an ecological and geo-political meta-crisis. I tried to find the roots of this, hoping to save humanity from extinction by unifying us around a mystical realization of oneness. 

Daniel's book list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse

Daniel Pinchbeck Why did Daniel love this book?

Edinger was a student of Carl Jung’s and this book picks up from Jung’s essential essay, “God’s Answer to Job”. Jung realized that God was in a dialectical relationship with his “Chosen People,” and when Job maintained his faith despite being subject to unspeakable cruelties, this compelled God to incarnate as Christ. Following Jung, Edinger believes we are currently living through the archetype of the Apocalypse. The word means “revealing” or “uncovering.” Psychologically, the Apocalypse is the “Coming of the self” into conscious realization. It is a point of maturity where we have gained the self-knowledge needed to integrate, rather than project, the Shadow. This portends a collective incarnation of God into our human world.

By Edward F. Edinger, George R. Elder (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Archetype of the Apocalypse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The collective belief in the End of the World, as described in the Biblical Book of Revelation, can be seen in public reaction to terrorist outrages such as those of Sept. 11, in the preoccupation with disasters, in the obsession with UFO's and the possibility of encountering extra-terrestrial life, and in the breakdown of social structures. Edinger argues that this very real psychological force is vitally important for our times, and he offers an alternative to catastrophe through understanding the meaning of these radiant scriptures.


Book cover of The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology

Daniel Pinchbeck Author Of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

From my list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career as a New York magazine editor and cynical journalist writing about art, celebrities, and show designers. Eventually I had an existential meltdown where I realized I was trapped in reductive materialism. I didn’t believe in a soul or a spirit or anything that wasn’t tangible. I decided to explore psychedelics and wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, after visiting indigenous cultures in Africa and South America where I took Iboga, ayahuasca, and mushrooms in initiation ceremonies. I learned we are facing an ecological and geo-political meta-crisis. I tried to find the roots of this, hoping to save humanity from extinction by unifying us around a mystical realization of oneness. 

Daniel's book list on a metaphysical perspective on the apocalypse

Daniel Pinchbeck Why did Daniel love this book?

The Mayan Factor had a huge influence on me when I read it after reading Jose’s other amazing books, Earth Ascending and Time and the Technosphere. He makes the case that the classic Maya civilization of the Yucatan was related to a galactic civilization that travels across the universe as patterns of information transduced into DNA so they can incarnate at particular junctures to perform a cosmic ritual of “synchronization.” The Mayan calendar is an artifact of this “Galactic Maya” who wanted us to understand we were starting to enter a new dimensional portal with the end of the 5,125 year Long Count on December 21, 2012. While reading this book, I had a crazy experience of the Galactic Maya entering into me and looking out through my eyes at our turbulent reality. Jose argues that a new calendar could shift us from chaos to harmony. A fabulous visionary excursion!

By José Argüelles,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Mayan Factor as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the extraordinary book that initiated the Harmonic Convergence in August 1987 and awakened the world to the Mayan Calendar. In it, Jose Arguelles revealed three revolutionary ideas: that a great moment of human transformation awaited us as we approached 2012: that there are galactic "seasons" and that the Maya accurately recorded them; and that each person had the capability to connect directly with the energy of a beam emanating from the galactic center that contains the power to awaken the higher mind.


Book cover of A Secret History of Consciousness

Mike Russell Author Of Magic: a novel

From my list on questioning the nature of reality and fun to read.

Why am I passionate about this?

Hello. My name is Mike Russell. I write books (novels, short story collections, and novellas) and make visual art (mostly paintings, occasionally sculptures). I love art and books that are surreal and magical because that is the way life seems to me, and I love art and books that are mind-expanding because we need to expand our minds to perceive just how surreal and magical life is. My books have been described as strange fiction, weird fiction, surrealism, magic realism, fantasy fiction… but I just like to call them Strange Books.

Mike's book list on questioning the nature of reality and fun to read

Mike Russell Why did Mike love this book?

I bought this book from a second hand shop; the book was fire damaged (perhaps as a result of a closed-minded reader spontaneously combusting?). It is a great introduction to anti-establishment, anti-materialist philosophers, thinkers, and whatnot. Gary Lachman writes in an accessible and conversational style and manages to remain questioning and thoughtful. He also used to play bass for Blondie and guitar for Iggy Pop.

By Gary Lachman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Secret History of Consciousness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

-- What is consciousness like?
-- How can consciousness be achieved?

Gary Lachman argues that consciousness is not a result of neurons and molecules, but is actually responsible for them. Meaning, he proposes, is not imported from the outer world, but rather creates the world.
He shows that consciouness is a living, evolving presence whose development can be traced through different historical periods. Concentrating on the late nineteenth-century onwards, Lachman exposes the 'secret history' of consciousness through thinkers such as P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, and Colin Wilson, as well as more mainstream philosophers like Henri Bergson, William James, Owen…


Book cover of Science Ideated: The Fall of Matter and the Contours of the Next Mainstream Scientific Worldview

Sam Torode Author Of Secrets of the Mind: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Keys to Expansive Mental Powers

From my list on uniting science and spirituality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m the author of three books about Ralph Waldo Emerson, in addition to other books, and host of the Living from the Soul podcast. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a compelling interest in the “battle” between science and religion. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church, which taught that the Earth was created in six days about 6,000 years ago and denied evolution. But I also loved dinosaurs and paleontology; the information I was exposed to often contradicted my faith. Today, I consider myself a Transcendentalist. I believe that mind, not matter, is fundamental; and that our individual minds are tiny portions of the Universal Mind, which could be called God.

Sam's book list on uniting science and spirituality

Sam Torode Why did Sam love this book?

Bernardo Kastrup has PhDs in Computer Engineering and Philosophy, and has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and Philips Research Laboratories. He’s today’s leading proponent of Idealism—the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others—which asserts that consciousness is the fundamental reality. 

I’ve read nearly all of Kastrup’s books, and found them difficult but rewarding. His most accessible work is this collection of essays (originally published in Scientific American and elsewhere), Science Ideated. 

Reading Kastrup can literally turn your worldview inside out, inducing a sort of mental vertigo. I’ve often had to set down a Kastrup book because my head is spinning!

By Bernardo Kastrup,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Science Ideated as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Leading-edge empirical observations are increasingly difficult to reconcile with 'scientific' materialism. Laboratory results in quantum mechanics, for instance, strongly indicate that there is no autonomous world of tables and chairs out there. Coupled with the inability of materialist neuroscience to explain consciousness, this is forcing both science and philosophy to contemplate alternative worldviews. Analytic idealism - the notion that reality, while equally amenable to scientific inquiry, is fundamentally mental - is a leading contender to replace 'scientific' materialism. In this book, the broad body of empirical evidence and reasoning in favor of analytic idealism is reviewed in an accessible manner.…


Book cover of The Stone Book Quartet

Elizabeth Kiem Author Of Orphan, Agent, Prima, Pawn

From my list on construction projects, literal, and metaphysical.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I published Orphan, Agent, Prima, Pawn, in which Soviet-era psychological warfare plays a heavy role, I happily washed my hands of Russian intrigue and turned to more benign, pastoral inspirations – my life-long relationship with an idyllic cathedral town in Wiltshire, for example. Just days later, the world learned that a certain Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov shared my fondness for Salisbury’s “world-famous 123-metre spire,” the glories of which prompted their 72-hour visit from Moscow (and overlapped with the botched poisoning of a KGB defector living down the road). Since then, I find myself drawn to works that explore the interstices of morality, criminality, and great construction projects.

Elizabeth's book list on construction projects, literal, and metaphysical

Elizabeth Kiem Why did Elizabeth love this book?

Like Golding, Garner is best known for his children’s books – tales that spring from the ancient mythology of his local Cheshire and wander into realms of high fantasy. But it is this slim novella, a collection of four stories binding as many generations of Garners (they have inhabited the region for centuries and they were, all of them - up until Alan, craftsmen, builders, laborers) that moves me to raptures. Beginning with a wide-eyed child’s discovery of cave drawings, the stories haul stone up above ground to lay out the longwalls of Garner’s mason progenitors and erect the spire of the local church, worn by Garner’s grandfather "like a dunce-cap.” The imagery and wordplay are stunning, binding dialect and landscape like a spell.

By Alan Garner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Stone Book Quartet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A classic work of rural magic realism from one of Britain's greatest children's novelists

Four interconnected fables of a way of living in rural England that is now disappeared.

Craftsmen pass on, or withhold, secrets of their relationship with the natural world, which gives them the material from which they create useful and beautiful things. Smiths and chandlers, steeplejacks and quarrymen, all live and work hand in hand with the seasons, the elements and the land. There is a mutual respect and a knowledge of the magical here that somehow, somewhere was lost to us. These fables beautifully recapture and…


Book cover of Philosophy of Material Nature: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and Prolegomena

Frank Scalambrino Author Of The Philosophy of Being in the Analytic, Continental, and Thomistic Traditions: Divergence and Dialogue

From my list on philosophical metaphysics on what is be-ing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a classically and formally trained philosopher. I have a Doctorate in Philosophy from Duquesne University (2011). I've been interested in philosophy for as long as I can remember; however, I began formally studying philosophy when I first discovered the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. I began teaching philosophy at the university level in 2004. I've taught over 100 university-level courses, including graduate-level courses in both philosophy and psychology. I'm presently finishing my tenth philosophy book, along with over 50 professional peer-reviewed articles in philosophy. These days my attention is devoted to sharing philosophy on the internet through The Philosophemes YouTube Channel, @Philosophemes on Instagram, and the Basic Philosophical Questions Podcast

Frank's book list on philosophical metaphysics on what is be-ing

Frank Scalambrino Why did Frank love this book?

Immanuel Kant is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy – specifically regarding metaphysics – because he discovered the internal logic and organization for all of philosophical metaphysics. The book with which Kant accomplished that monumental feat is extremely difficult to read and understand. Therefore, Kant wrote an easier-to-read version, and that is the book that I am recommending: Philosophy of Material Nature. This book is highly affordable and readable.

The book that the Philosophy of Material Nature paraphrases is, of course, the Critique of Pure Reason. What all of these works show us is that philosophical metaphysics naturally divides into theological metaphysics, cosmological metaphysics, and psychological metaphysics. Kant’s achievement is standardly characterized as the articulation of philosophical metaphysics as a science. The general term for such a science is “transcendental philosophy.” Thus, the rest of the books in this recommendation list relate to…

By Immanuel Kant, James W. Ellington,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Philosophy of Material Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume combines two of Kant's key works on the metaphysics of nature--the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science --in the preeminent translations of James W. Ellington. Each work is preceded by an expert Introduction by Ellington and is followed by a German-English List of Terms and an Index.


Book cover of The Prophet of Queens

Martin Treanor Author Of The Logos Prophecy

From my list on indulge the metaphysical mind and cultivate a mystery.

Why am I passionate about this?

Through both a former career as an engineer and my writing, I have developed a craving (bordering on obsession) for all things scientific, historical, archaeological, metaphysical, and a more than avid interest in quantum physics which I like to introduce into my books and stories. I also have a fondness for the dark and macabre, for the bizarre, the wondrous, and the plain out there. The weirder the concept – the more I like it… get consumed by it.

Martin's book list on indulge the metaphysical mind and cultivate a mystery

Martin Treanor Why did Martin love this book?

I had read another of Glenn Kleier’s books, The Knowledge of Good & Evil, which is a Dante-like trip into Hell – so, I was very excited when he released The Prophet of Queens, a book that plays in practically all of my ballparks: quantum physics, time anomalies, autocratic religious practices, and the sheer, almost lustful need to pursue a goal even though the consequences may shatter reality.

With the clever use of fairly mundane, workaday characters, Glenn Kleier throws open the doors to possibility and the repercussions of raging ambition.

I love this book – and, as with his others, is well-written.

By Glenn Kleier,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Prophet of Queens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The world hasn't heard from a true prophet in 2,000 years. So why now? And why this guy?

Scotty Butterfield is a recluse. A college dropout clinging to a dead-end job and a rundown sublet in New York City, spending his nights lost in videogames. When suddenly he begins to receive emails from someone calling himself a "Messenger of the Lord," warning of imminent death and destruction in the city. An obvious scam.

Yet the predictions bear out.

Horrified, Scotty fears he's caught up in some terrorist plot, only to realize the disasters are impossible for any human to foresee…


Book cover of The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

Ruth Brandon Author Of Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945

From my list on group biographies.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love writing group biographies (I‘ve written four and my next book, Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art, will be another). I enjoy the intellectual scope they offer, the way they let you explore a world. I’m less interested in the details of individual lives than in the opportunity biography offers to explore social history, and group biography is particularly suited to that. They’re not easy to do, it’s no good putting down just one damn life after another, but I enjoy the challenge of finding the shape that will let me fit everyone’s personalities and ideas into a coherent story. 

Ruth's book list on group biographies

Ruth Brandon Why did Ruth love this book?

The Metaphysical Club is about the Pragmatist philosophers: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. This sounds forbidding, but it’s anything but. Group biography shows how and why particular ideas occur to particular people at a particular moment, and this is a brilliant example of it.

By Louis Menand,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Metaphysical Club as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A riveting, original book about the creation of the modern American mind.

The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., founder of modern jurisprudence; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.…


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