📜 Our Editorial Process
From candidate to catalog
- Selection. New titles enter as candidates — from publisher catalogs, reader requests, and the bibliographies of books we already trust.
- Review. An editor reads or closely reviews the book: text quality, translation, sources, place in its tradition.
- Annotation. We write our own description — what the book actually is, who it is for, how it compares. Concrete, no boilerplate, no pathos.
- Scoring. The book receives its Esoterica Score and is placed in its tradition's hall.
- Revision. Ratings and notes are refined as reader reviews and new editions arrive.
Our sources
Publisher and distributor metadata (verified, not just copied), academic literature on Western esotericism, reference works with citation checking, and the specialist communities where these books are actually discussed. When sources disagree, we say so.
Principles
- If a book is in the catalog — someone on the team has read it or carefully reviewed it.
- Every description is written for that book — specifics, not templates.
- Publishers do not pay for placement or praise.
- Factual errors are corrected publicly, with a note.
