Vis­i­tors should be aware that these books are writ­ten in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent Euro­pean lan­guages. Although we’ve grown accus­tomed through pop­u­lar media to think­ing of mag­i­cal books as cook­books, full of recipes and incan­ta­tions, the real­i­ty is far dif­fer­ent. Encoun­ter­ing the vast and strange trea­sures in the online library, one thinks of the type of the magi­cian rep­re­sent­ed in Goethe’s Faust, holed up in his study,Where even the wel­come day­light strainsBut duski­ly through the paint­ed panes. Hemmed in by many a top­pling heapOf books worm-eat­en, gray with dust,Which to the vault­ed ceil­ing creepThe library doesn’t only con­tain occult books. Enter the Rit­man’s new dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of occult texts here.