While living in New York, Seligmann assembled a library on magic which eventually comprised several hundred volumes. References to obscure and arcane rites fill his paintings.

Through my interest in magic can hardly be brought
into immediate relationship with my work as a painter,
there is something about magic which fascinates me. It is
not in vain that we speak of magical arts. Magic philosophy
teaches that the universe is one, that every phenomenon in
the world of matter and of ideas obeys the one law which
co-ordinates the All. Such doctrine sounds like a program
for the painter: is it not his task to shape into a perfect
unity within his canvas the variety of depicted forms? The
presuppositions of high magic: 'All is contained in All', and
'All is One' are the basis of my forthcoming book.
(Kurt Seligmann in "Eleven Europeans in America," The
Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, New York, 1946, vol. XIII,
nos. 4-5, p. 11)

The book to which Seligmann refers is the Mirror of Magic, published by Pantheon in 1947, which was eventually recognized world-wide as a classic treatise on the subject. It was reprinted in 1971 under the title.