Turba Philosophorum

For those looking for period sources of occult knowledge, there are few books better than The Turba Philosophorum, also known as Assembly of the Philosophers. The text is one of the oldest known European alchemy books. The book, translated from Arabic to Latin and later to English, is believed to have been written sometime around 900 A.D. and scholars are still mining it for new secrets some 1,100 years later. The text strives to put Greek alchemy into the Arabic language and to adapt it to Islamic science, which was at the forefront in its time. Throughout the book, nine philosophers take part in a discussion, establishing 72 dicta. Represented in the text are Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, Leucippus, Ecphantus, Pythagoras and Xenophanes. In the text, these great thinkers discuss matter, how it acts, and relate this to cosmology.