China

This category holds actual historical persons whose work bore on the traditions in the atlas: philosophers, astrologers, alchemists, mystics, theologians, scholars and occultists. Unlike the gods and legendary characters, these are people who can be dated and, in most cases, documented, and the entries give a lifespan, a field and the tradition each worked in or influenced.

The range runs from ancient philosophers and astronomers through medieval alchemists and Kabbalists to the founders of modern occultism, and includes figures central to the esoteric currents the atlas traces even where mainstream history treats them as marginal.

Two problems recur in this material and the atlas addresses both. First, influential esoteric writing is often pseudonymous or misattributed, credited to a prestigious ancient name; the entries separate the real author, where known, from the legendary one. Second, some figures accreted so much legend that the person is hard to see behind the persona, and the entries distinguish the documented life from the later tradition.

Some individuals are dual-modelled (a historical figure here and, in their own tradition, a founder or saint elsewhere in the atlas), and the pages are kept complementary rather than duplicated.