This guy walked around an entire continent
Our friends over at GreatestAdventurers.com just posted the book about a journalist who in 1921 walked around Australia alone and unassisted. The Amateur Tramp – The man who walked around a continent
Doktor Johannes Faust’s Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis
Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis (~Natural and non-natural magic) was written in 1505 in Germany by a Doktor Johannes Faust, an alchemist and devil worshipper from the village of Knittlingen, Württemberg. It is said that he was a genius but several but after he had fled a teaching position in Kreuznach after molesting several of the boys […]
The spiritual writings of Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter, art theorist, and poet. He became famous for painting the first purely abstract works as part of the Soviet avant-garde that flourished until about 1930. Kandinsky’s experiments became too much for Stalin’s increasing political control over the art-scene and also Kandinsky’s spiritual outlook was not comme il faut for the trending Soviet Realism. […]
The Solar Anus
The Solar Anus, originally L’anus solaire is a very peculiar work in the surrealistic genre. It was written in 1927 by the French author Georges Bataille and illustrated by André Masson in a later edition. From the book: “An abandoned shoe, a rotten tooth, a snub nose, the cook spitting in the soup of his masters […]
Ye Magick Mirrour of Old Japan
Ye Magick Mirrour of Old Japan is a very special little book about the Japanese tradition of sacred mirrors. The book was privately printed in 97 copies and it is based on a discourse delivered at a Meeting of the Sette holden at Limmer’s Hotel (from where we also got the Limmer’s Gin Punch) on […]
Necronomicon and the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft
Necronomicon is the book that never existed, or at least that is what I believe, even though more than a dozen books claim to be the original translation. You can find lots of sites discussing the Necronomicon especially in the satanistic and urban shamanistic corners of the Internet. The myth, that was brought forward by […]
Vaimanika Shastra
Vaimanika Shastra is a very strange illustrated book about ancient flying machines from Hindu India. While everything seems to be debunked and even the author admits that the entire content is based upon visions, the content is widely used to ignite theories about an golden ancient era in India where people build flying machines. The book […]
The Complete works of Nostradamus PDF
The Complete works of Nostradamus compiled in one PDF. 1 March 1555 the French scientist, doctor, and astrologist Michel de Nostradamus, better known these days as Nostradamus, sat down and wrote the foreword to his spectacular work Centuria. Centuria means ‘a hundred’, and it might refer to the span of years his prophecies reach. The foreword is […]
How to hide anything
How to hide anything. Holybooks.com is not only about spiritual books, it is also about the peculiar, remarkable and unexpected wonders from the world of public domain e-books. Actually, the most downloaded books here are in the ones from the “Bizarre” category. Today I present a long forgotten jewel for the ones with something to hide […]
Easy Journey to other Planets
Easy Journey to other Planets is quite amusing and at the same time rather sad. It intends to document the power of Bhakti Yoga, but the entire basis is an unsubstantiated criticism of modern science. The publisher, the Hare Krishna Movement, still insists that NASA’s moon landing was a fake and that man’s inspiration to […]
The Book of Soyga
The Book of Soyga also known as Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor or Soyga: the book that kills was written in the 16th-century and apparently lost until it was found at the British Library in 1994. The work consists of several books Liber Aldaraia, Liber Radiorum, and Liber decimus septimus and a number of minor books. Together they form a […]
Rohonc Codex
The Rohonc Codex is a illustrated, handwritten manuscript in some ways similar to the The Voynich Manuscript and other mysterious, encoded texts from the European Middle Ages. Not a single word has been decoded from the Rohonc Codex, though many have tried. Year-long studies have been made and experts in encryption have worked on the case. What […]
Zr + 4HCl → ZrCl4 + 2H2 U + 3F2 → UF6 by Roberto Altmann
Zr + 4HCl → ZrCl4 + 2H2 U + 3F2 → UF6 is a psychedelic cartoon by the Cuban artist Roberto Altmann, created in 1970. It is shown here as an addition to our “Bizarre” section. The cartoon is 13 pages long and it is hard to find any meaningful clues about what is going, […]
On the Writings of the Insane
On the Writings of the Insane is a peculiar inquiry into the mind of hospitalized and medicated patients at the Cambridgeshire County Asylum. It was written by the Medical Superintendent G. Mackenzie and published in 1870. The book seeks to decipher the patients handwritten notes and drawings, and contrary to what one might believe he […]
Geometrical Psychology or the Science of Representation
Geometrical Psychology or the Science of Representation is the result of lifelong studies by the independent spiritual thinker and mathematician Benjamin Betts. I have not read more than the foreword, but this is something different. Benjamin Betts understood evolution as the evolution of mans consciousness. He attempted to represent the successive stages evolution by means of symbolical mathematical forms. These forms represent […]
The Illuminated Sketchbook of Stephan Scriber
The Illuminated Sketchbook of Stephan Scriber anno 1494. This is a surprisingly well preserved sketchbook by Stephan Scriber, a monk from South-West Germany. This book is considered a playground for ideas for his work as illustrator. This gives an interesting insight into how ideas and layouts for illuminated manuscripts were tried out and skills developed in production of late-gothic […]
Bizarre Friday on Holybooks.com
I often come across some more obscure works which I share here occasionally. These books are not related to the overall topic of this website, but you have been warned before, and I can see that books such as the Voynich Manuscript, Codex Serahinianus, and Gadsby are among the most downloaded. I know you like them, […]
The Urantia Papers – The Urantia Book or The Fifth Epochal Revelation
The Urantia Papers also know as The Urantia Book or The Fifth Epochal Revelation is a long and very strange book. It is said to be written sometime between 1924 and 1955 somewhere around Chicago. The author is unknown and there are many speculations about how it was written from sleeping mediums to plain materialization. The story itself […]
Bizarre Tuesday on HolyBooks.com: The Voynich Manuscript and CODEX Serahinianus
The Voynich Manuscript and CODEX Serahinianus. Longtime friends of HolyBooks.com will recognize that I have a weakness for the more peculiar works and I post them here regardless of their spiritual attributes in admiration of human creativity. Today I have two of these goodies for you and if you are into this, you will not […]
The Bitter Book of Anger by Manflesh
The Bitter Book of Anger by Manflesh is hard to get a hold on. It starts out citing the author himself: “Enlightenment is just something unenlightened people made up,” and it goes on following a 70-year old zen-guru´s travel through USA and Mexico. This book is different, read it for fun or for the sake […]
Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright – 50.000 words without the letter “e”
This bizarre book, Gadsby, is a lipogram written in 1939 by the american Ernest Vincent Wright. The concept is the total absence of the letter “e” from all sentences on all pages. An article in the Oshkosh Daily in 1937 wrote that the manuscript was “amazingly smooth. No halting parts. A continuity of plot and almost classic clarity obtains.” Wright […]
Mushrooms Russia and History
Mushrooms Russia and History is addressed to those who love mushrooms, who love the whole rich world of wild mushrooms in the same way that many love the flowers of the field and the birds of the air. “Our public is certainly one of the smallest in the English-speaking world, but no matter. We invite […]