About The Hermetic Library at Hermetic.com

In the beginning

Al Billings founded the Hermetic Library in 1996 because he wanted a place where he could host writings to do with Hermeticism and magic that would not otherwise be available, especially online. It has grown over the years to host the work of a number of magicians and to being one of the standard reference sites for the work of Aleister Crowley.

In his youth in the Seattle BBS scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Al was also quite well-known by the ’nym (pseudonym) “Grendel”. He ran the Revelstone BBS out of North Seattle Community college “The Sacred Grove” until 1994. He ran an early Internet connection to his BBS as pagan.UUCP, connecting it to the Internet in early 1991. This BBS was later a member of the Fidonet technology Pagan/Occult Distribution Network (PODnet). This is when Al first met many luminaries from the esoteric community. From the early 1990s, he ran a number of early pagan-related e-mail lists and, in 1994, he began creating websites on the recently popularized world wide web.

During the first few years of the 21st century, Al began to gradually shift his focus to non-magical interests, eventually becoming a Buddhist. With this transition, work on the Hermetic Library slowed and eventually stopped, for the most part. As of 2009, Al decided to transfer the site to new stewardship, in the hopes that a new custodian would have more time and energy to devote to it while he begins the process of working on his doctorate in Buddhist Studies in California.

You can follow Al via his blog, Open Buddha.