Although our main focus is to restore and conserve Boleskine House, we intend to facilitate education and learning by establishing a library so that Boleskine can in part be a research centre for history, heritage, and the arts and humanities. Our library is exclusively donation-based, and so we are slowly adding titles little by little.

We wish to collect as much Highland history as possible, be it monographs, pamphlets, articles or any other manuscripts. The more local history the better, but we are collecting complete histories from the Picts to post-Culloden Scotland. We have a team of trained archivists so we can install and preserve an academically-driven legacy for Boleskine House forever more.

In addition to Highland history, historic archaeology and architecture, we will also install a unique collection of literature on the Western esoteric tradition, fitting for what makes Boleskine so intriguing. Existing at the margins of religion, philosophy, cultural studies, the arts and natural sciences, Western esotericism is a repository for historical knowledge that has been relegated to the fringes of Western culture and mainstream humanities since at least the early modern period. Whether it concerns the impact of Platonic paganism on early Christianity, the Hermetic influence on the Renaissance, the shaping of the women’s suffrage movement by nineteenth–century spiritualism, or how the occult informed radical politics in the twentieth–century, esotericism’s neglect within scholarship heightens the significance of the future Boleskine House library which will give voice to this often overlooked body of knowledge. The library will draw from many sources but the purpose is unified. Like a prism “the colours are many but the light is one”.

How you can help

  • Are you a published author of Western esotericism or Scottish history? Or a research student? We would be delighted to receive copies of your books, research papers and theses.
  • Are you a bibliophile looking to make some space in your home library and/or a philanthropist seeking ways to help preserve and disseminate knowledge for future generations?
  • Are you a collector of rare, esoteric texts looking for a safe and permanent home for your collection for posterity?

Authors, publishers, researchers, bibliophiles and philanthropists if you would like to leave a lasting gift to future generations, to be held in the reference library at Boleskine House in a collection under your name please contact: library@BoleskineHouse.org. Andy and Elin would love to hear from you.