Lack of progress report 2021.12.25

Primary key-entry on "A Select Treatise" is now done: a draft of this section has been uploaded to Scribd.

I'm now getting more doubtful as to whether this was actually by the author of the Janua Magica Reserata instead of having been written by someone else in imitation of it.  Leaving aside vagaries of spelling in the Sloane 3821 copy, which can be chalked up to the copyist, generally grammar is worse, sentence structure frequently broken and the conjurations have a jarring shift in the tone adopted towards the spirits addressed: the opening refers them as "blessed," "dignified" and "Angelicall," but near the end they are threatened (spelling modernised):

[...] visibly show thyself at this very minute, as you will answer the contrary, being high misdemeanour, at your peril, before Him who shall come to judge the quick and the dead and the world by fire: Fiat, Fiat, Fiat.

... which kind of language is not used in the Janua, Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, "Celestial Confirmations," nor even the "Operations of the Angles of the Air" to the demon kings and their subordinates: it's more normally associated with spirits of dubious or mixed nature or explicitly referred to as "fallen."

EDIT: Actually, a similar phrase, "Come away as you will answer the contrary upon the highest of Misdemeanor, to your principle King and Governor," does appear in the "Tenth Key" of the Janua in Sloane 3825 (fol. 96r), addressed to the glorious, great sacred celestial Angel Substitute Name (assuming that's what the abbreviation used in the MS. means) of the Choir of Blessed Souls: but that "Tenth Key" was not part of the original work (it is in a radically different style to the other nine, the copy in 3825 is in different handwriting and written in, somewhat cramped, on a single page between the original end of the Janua and the start of the next text).  Indeed, the "Tenth Key" is stylistically closer to the conjurations of "A Select Treatise" than either is to the Janua or Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, and both cite Ogim Osi as an apparent divine name, which (at least with that orthography) appears to be otherwise practically unknown (the only Google hits for it in such a context are for (a) pirated copies of Keys to the Gateway of Magic, Skinner & Rankine's typeset of the Janua and (b) a modern ritual for the planetary Intelligences, which itself seems to derive directly or indirectly from "A Select Treatise").

Further, the descriptions of the Intelligences, as well as the texts of the conjurations, make explicit references to technical astrological considerations, implying that they should be called when their planet is "both essentially and accidentally well dignified and fortified," whereas by contrast the planetary invocations of "Celestial Confirmations" simply refer to the planetary "day and hour" system which is largely a dodge for avoiding the hassle of calculating aspects, dignities and the like.

* * *

I would caution people that @dancingstar93 on Twitter is not me, but (a) that handle's owner does not seem to have actually done anything with it since creating the account in 2012 and (b) I doubt anyone who saw their profile and knows me either IRL or online would have made the mistake anyway.

Lack of progress report 2021.12.20

A bit over half the key entry on the "Select Treatise" from Sloane 3821 is now done, and what remains is largely repetition with a few names changed (the conjurations of the Intelligences of Venus, Mercury & Luna).  Figures have been redrawn, although since I took an editorial decision to correct the characters of the Intelligences & draw them to proportion, some of them ended up bearing little resemblance to those in the MS., particularly that of the Intelligence of the Intelligences of the Moon, whose name is shortened to "Malcha" throughout, since saying Malkah be-Tarshithim A'ad be-Ruach Shechaqim (or however the hell you want to Romanize it) three times in a row was evidently too much even for the kind of magician who writes conjurations as single run-on sentences of 1600 words or more full of legalistic phrasing.

And yes, the original MS. does tend to spell "Seal" thus inconsistently.

Late to the party again . . .

Newberry Library, Chicago: Case MS. 5017, "Book of Magical Charms."

Early 17th-century magical miscellany in English and Latin.  Includes Heptameron extracts, Vinculum Salomonis (radically different from the Heptameron / Lucidarium version) spirit characters and names.  In 2017 the main scribe was identified, by Ranae Slatterley of the Middle Temple Library in London, as being English lawyer Robert Ashley (1565-1641): this work thus pre-dates the Lemegeton and the major divisions of Sloane 3824.  On fol. 7r (image no. 17 at the link) is a variant form of the character of Andromalius (one letter is ambiguously written and the name could be Andromalcus or Andromaleus) as well as a character for Blethe who features in a process in Sloane 3824 fol. 114v.

Dammit, why didn't I find out about this when the transcription project was actually a thing?  To be fair, back then I probably didn't know Latin and English scribal abbreviations of the period any better than the random Wiccans and other non-specialists who did much of their transcribing.

As it happens, two years prior to the crowd-sourced transcription project being launched, someone in any case transcribed the entire thing as part of an M.A. thesis: not being familiar with the handwriting of early modern English lawyers, she concluded based on the contents that the compiler / scribe was a cunning-man from the east of England or East Midlands.

* * *

The title Longobardus in Sloane MS. 3824 is probably a reference to "Robertus Longobardus," which name appears as a variant form of "Rupertus Lombardus" (also "Robert Lombard") as the imputed author of a late-mediæval magical text, the Thesaurus Spirituum (also ascribed to the 13th-century monk Roger Bacon).  See Klaassen, The Transformations of Magic, p. 234 note. 21.  It is possibly just one of them coincidence things that the first, middle and last letters of that name are the initials of certain "Spirits of great power L:B:S:" who are conjured without actually giving their names at length in one of the texts in that collection.

* * *

When seeing repeated appeals in 17th-century magical texts for Angels to "appear in this CG" one has to remember that those initials meant something different back then.

Of Keys and Gates (6)

The "Celestial Keys" of the Janua (well, just the first one, but the rest just change the names of the hierarchy and in 3-9 kludge in references to the days of Creation) were actually printed long before McLean's Treatise on Angel Magic in the 1980s.  By the power of infernal necromancy (a.k.a. Google Books) I have learned that in 1828, Robert Cross "Raphael" Smith, the astrologer, included the "Isagogicall Preface," preliminary prayer and first Key under the title "Celestial Magic" in The Familiar Astrologer (pp. 542-552, 615-628 of the edition--an 1831 reprint--linked).

This copy follows the Harley 6482 redaction, although "Raphael" claimed to have copied it from "a beautifully illuminated magical Manuscript, formerly in the possession of the celebrated Mr. Richard Cosway, R.A." (1742-1821); a note at the end implies that Smith's source MS. ended after the "First Key."

The Harleian collection was acquired by the British Museum from Edward Harley's widow in 1753; it is an open, and largely unimportant, question as to whether Cosway's copy was made before or after that date.

I'm now wondering if the author(s) of the "Invocation of Angels" texts were also responsible for "Longobardus," or at least the prayers and conjurations on fol. 3-15 of Sloane 3824 if that title also covers the material following: there is certainly a close stylistic similarity and many turns of phrase occur repeatedly: of course, the latter raises the question of whether that kind of language was just a commonplace of English magical texts of the period.

Lack of progress report 2021.12.02

Latest tweaks and edits to the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia have been uploaded, incorporating material based on the recent post.

The conjurations of "Celestial Confirmations of Terrestrial Observations," one of the "Invocation of Angels" texts from the Sommers / Jekyll / Sloane collection (BL Sloane MS. 3821 fol. 166-177) that AFAIK hasn't been published yet, have been keyed; unfortunately the rubric (including about 7 lines of text at the start and an uncertain amount at the end) is completely unreadable in the copy I'm working from and so working out the actual purpose and intended method of working of the thing is largely a matter of guesswork.  These texts include substantial amounts of phrasing near-verbatim from the "Celestial Keys" of the Janua Magica Reserata and were credibly of the same authorship, also they do not appear to be based around evocation to crystal: rather, the intent seems to be to call on the planetary Angels to "dignify and give full effectual power, virtue, force and influence" to a talisman or some other material basis.   

The section on the Demon Kings from 3821 (fol. 158-165, 178-187) has also been typed, but needs to be properly collated with the corresponding material in Sloane 3824 (which is somewhere above and close to it in the stemma) and the Folger "Book of Magic" which while nearly a century earlier belongs to the same tradition and has much material that was either redacted out or omitted by accident (e.g. most of the description of Egyn).  

The other unpublished text from that group, "A Select Treatise as it was first discovered to the Egyptian Magi" (conjurations of the Planetary Intelligences from Agrippa: Sloane 3821 fol. 205-225, a fragment also appears in Sloane 3825 immediately following Janua Magica Reserata, but the bulk of that copy got detached prior to the Janua being bound up with the Lemegeton), hardly anything has been done on.  (EDIT: have now keyed the introduction and the conjuration of Agiel.)

[EDIT: in fact, the Sloane 3825 copy of "A Select Treatise" was never finished: the sheet that was detatched prior to the Lemegeton being bound up with it is still extant and was attached to the "Longobardus" notebook by Ashmole: the continuation trails off after half a page.]

Also did a bit more of "Practice of the Tables" (keyed all of "Practice of the East Table,"--the West, North and South sections are pretty much the same with the names changed, and some of the conjurations of ORO from the second and third set), but this one is out there already, and also founded on an earlier and more accurate MS. copy than the one I've been using (Sloane 307 hasn't been digitised and posted yet to my knowledge): whatever my issues with the editorial treatment, it is important to the history of English magic & by manifesting it the editors did a service to those of us who don't have the resources / connections to directly examine the originals.

Grrr... (2)

Last I checked one of the top Google hits for the "Celephaïs Press" name is an AbeBooks listing for a printed edition of Equinox vol. I nos. 1-4, to which someone considerately attached my civil name (which was *not* on the PDFs, which were further explicitly stated to be not for commercial or "shareware" distribution).  I do not know who issued these: the seller describes them as "An elusive reprint of Volume I, Nos. 1-4 (seemingly, only the first four numbers were ever issued?). No date, or place of publication"; a listing on Amazon gives the publication date as 2008.  What I do know is that I only even found out about these existing years after the event, and needless to say never got a cut of whatever the actual publisher made on them.

EDIT: Calming down slightly . . . whatever justification the rest of the above might have, complaining about someone attaching my civil name to a text I edited under a pseudonym would be more that a little hypocritical, as (a) I actually did it to myself in one or two instances, which is probably how the seller found it out, and (b) I've done exactly the same thing to other people.  And anyone who is interested in this subject who knows me IRL probably already knows that I am "Frater T.S.," and to anyone who doesn't, a relatively common English given name and surname really won't mean all that much.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (9)

The more I look at it, the more complicated the stemma of the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia gets.  That is:

1. The original 17th-century redaction depends on the 1665 Robert Turner translation of the Heptameron (and thus the Harley Lemegeton, which was further heavily redacted from the text represented by the Sloane copies, can. not. possibly. derive from the work of someone who died in 1656).  There are two citations in the Heptameron's Exorcismus Spirituum Aërorum that were omitted in Turner's translation, though included in his typeset of the Latin (addressing the spirits as vos qui, vestra culpa, de coelo eiecti fuistis usque ad infernum locum, "you who, for your sin, were cast out of heaven even unto the infernal region" -- and exorcising them per eam quæ Ecclesia Dei nominatur, "by she who is called the Church of God") and were similarly skipped over in the corresponding sections of the second conjuration of the Ars Goëtia, and two instances of sedem ("seat") being rendered "seal," that are perpetuated into the Goëtia, as well as the questionable translation of "nona cohorte" as "in the ninth Legion" in the "Beralanensis" conjuration.  All these points differ, for example, in the other known 17th-century English translation of the Heptameron, (BL Sloane MS. 3851 fol. 61r-74r -- see specifically fol. 64v, 65v).

2. The redactor of the Ars Goëtia (going on the Sloane MS. 3825 version), while perpetuating the aforementioned errors and omissions, besides the major rearrangements (e.g. displacing the concluding section of the Exorcism / Vinculum into "The Constraint," and moving the bulk of the "Beralanensis" conjuration into the first conjuration), freely rephrased citations in the second conjuration and made minor rearrangements in their order.  Other passages remain, barring vagaries of spelling, capitalisation and punctuation, verbatim from Turner.

Since the Vinculum Spirituum was a floating text, extant exemplars of which show a great deal of variation, that was incorporated into the Lucidarium prior to that being turned into the Heptameron, it is of course possible that the redactor of the Goëtia had a variant copy in Latin or English, probably not under that title (else why, as previously remarked, make up something else to meet the demand for the "Spirits' Chain"?): on the other hand, there are no citations in the second conjuration of the Goëtia that are not in the Heptameron version of the Vinculum; there is no mention, for instance, of the great and terrible name Gin which Noah heard and spake and was delivered from the Flood, which appears in other English texts of the period deriving from the Vinculum (Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 14r, 144v; see also Sloane MS. 3847 fol. 14r).

3. Mathers' redaction, while retaining the major rearrangements, reverts some minor rearrangements and is generally phrased much closer to Turner's translation than to the Sloane Lemegeton MSS.  It also has major variations that are not attested by any of the BL Lemegeton MSS. and, in so far as they relate to the general rearrangement of the conjurations between the Heptameron and Ars Goëtia, are not simply derived from Turner; this may have been based on an otherwise unknown Lemegeton text, or may have been invented by Mathers.  For instance, the first conjuration in Sloane MS. 3825 runs as followeth:

I Invocate and conjure you spirit N. & being with power armed from the supreame Majesty I throughly [sic] command you by Beralanensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachiæ & Apologiæ Sedes, and the most powerfull princes, Genio Liachidi ministers of the Tartarean seat, cheeefe princes of <of> the seat of Apologia, in the Ninth Legion; I exorcize & powerfully command you spirit N, in and by him that said the word and it was done; and by all the holy and most glorious names of the most holy and true God,  and by these his most holy names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohe, Zebeoth, Elion, Escerchie, Jah, Tetragrammaton, Saday, that you forthwith appeare and shew yourselves here unto me before this Circle, in a fair and humane shape, without any deformity or ugly shew, and without delay, doe ye come; from all parts of the world to make <make> rationall answeres unto all Things which I shall ask of you, and come yee peaceably visibly and afably without delay, manifesting what I desire, being conjured by the name of the Eternall living and true God, Helioren, I conjure you by the especiall and true name of your God that you are obedient unto and by the name of the King, which beareth rule over you, that forthwith you come without Tarring  and fullfill my desires, and command, and persist unto the End, & according to my Intentions and I conjure you by him by whome all Creatures are obedient and by this ineffable name Tetragrammaton Jehovah, which being heard, the Elements are overthrown, the aire is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of Celestialls, Terrestialls & Infernalls doe tremble, and are troubled and confounded together, that you visibly and affelby speak unto me with a Clear voice Intelligible, and without any ambiguity, therefore come ye in the name Adonai Zebeoth, Adonai Amiorem, com com why stay you hasten Adonay, Saday, the Kinge of kings commandeth you.

The other Sloane Lemegeton texts have only minor variations with this.  Whereas Mathers' text runs:

I do invocate and conjure thee, O Spirit, N., and being with power armed from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by Beralanensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachia, and Apologiæ Sedes; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidæ, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee.  And being armed with power from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient.  Also I, being made after the image of God, endued with power from God, and created according to His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of God, El, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit N.  And I command thee by Him who spake the Word and his Fiat was accomplished, and by all the names of God.  Also be the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Ehohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddäi, Lord God Most High, O thou spirit N., that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity.  [&c., &c., &c. -- see the CP Goëtia for the rest.]

"I, being made after [...] O thou Spirit N," is displaced from the start of the "Exorcism of the Spirits of the Air" and does not appear anywhere in the Sloane 3825 Goëtia.

4. Mathers had access to one or more Lemegeton texts in unspecified private collections.  At least one of these was separate from the Frederick Hockley transmission line (an incomplete exemplar of which is in Wellcome MS. 3203): Mathers gives four versions of the introductory description of the work detailing the separate books, three of which include the Ars Notoria: Hockley's source (which he described as "a MS. in two volumes, about the date of 1680 to 1700") only had the first four "books" (see his copy of the introductory description in Wellcome MS. 4665); and of the four BL Lemegeton MSS., Sloane MS. 2731 omits the Ars Notoria and Harley MS. 6483 omits the outline description.  Hockley's version of the first conjuration is also closer to the Sloane copies than to the Mathers redaction (the copy in Wellcome 3203 omits some phrases, possibly by copyist eye-skip).  The copy which was later acquired by Professor E.M. Butler (who reproduced an illustration from it in her Ritual Magic) also apparently lacked the Ars Notoria (she characterises it as being similar in content to Sloane 2731).

5. Mathers, or someone in an otherwise unknown MS. tradition, while generally modernising spelling and standardising the orthography of names of God of Hebrew origin, introduced archaic English inflectional forms that weren't in the 17th-century versions.

I have uploaded a tabulation of the parallel passages to Scribd.

Lack of progress report 2021.11.25

A few pages of the "Invocation of Angels" texts that are actually legible in my copies have been keyed (26 or so leaves of "Practice of the Tables" from Sloane MS. 3821 mainly), and a bit more progress made on 3824, although the condition of the final section (specifically the large amount of rubricated text that is completely unreadable in the images I'm working from) makes it unlikely that the project can be satisfactorily completed with the materials I currently have.

The final division of 3824 (fol. 131-154) has the snappy title, "The Magick and Magicall Elements of the Seven days of the week, with their Appropriate hours, and the four Annual Seasons," which, as one might suspect from the title is a rearranged and expanded (bloated, rather) English version of the Heptameron seu elementa magica of pseudo-Abano.  Certain readings (specifically the suffumigation for Sunday, which is given the double reading "Red Wheat or Red Sanders") indicate the work's redaction history involved both the 1655 and 1665 editions of Turner's translation.  The considerations and conjurations of the days of the week occupy fol. 131-139r, concluding with a table of the Angels of the hours; fol. 139v / 140r are summary tables with the names of the 7 days and four seasons, with some example figures of the circle.

The latter part of the text is the ritual rubric and general conjurations.  For an illustration of what I mean by describing this text as "bloated," consider the prayer to be said at robing (variants of which occur frequently in Solomonic magical texts).  The Vadian Lucidarium (Vad Slg MS. 334, p. 16) reads:

Ancor, amacor, amilces, theodomas, Iancor, Per merita angelorum tuorum domine induam vestimenta salutis, ut hoc quod desidero possim perducere ad effectum per te sanctissime Adonay, cuius regnum permanet per omnia secula seculorum.  Amen.

In the Latin Heptameron (ed. 1559) it runs as followeth:

Ancor, Amacor, Amides, Theodonias, Anitor, Per merita Angelorum tuorum sanctorum Domine, induam vestimenta salutis: ut hoc quod desidero, possim perducere ad effectum: per te sanctissime Adonay, cuius Regnum permanet, per omnia secula seculorum, Amen.

Turner (1665) translates this thus:

Ancor, Amacor, Amides, Theodonias, Anitor, by the merits of the Angels, O Lord, I will put on the Garment of Salvation, that this which I desire I may bring to effect: through thee the most holy Adonay, whose kingdome endureth for ever and ever, Amen.

For comparison, a 17th-century (per the BL catalogue of manuscripts) English "Key of Solomon"  version (Sloane MS. 3645, fol. 14v) has:

Antor, Anator, et Anabis, Theodomas, Ianitor, By the deserts [an obsolete usage] of the holy Angells I will put on the vesture of health that I may bring to pass my desire by thee O holy Adonay, whose kingdome hath noe end.

And the variant of the Ars Goëtia (Sloane MS. 3825, fol. 113v, roughly contemporary with 3824): 

By the figurative mysterie of these holy vestures or vestments, I will cloath me with the armour of salvation in the strength of the highest Ancor Amacor Amides Theodonias Anitor, that my desired End may be effected through the [sic] strength Adonay, to whome the praise & glory will forever & ever belong Amen. 

Compare the following, from the fifth of the nine chapters of ritual material interpolated at the start of Book XV of the 1665 edition of Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (given the dates involved it is possible that the redactor of the Ars Goëtia used this edition of Scot: but it is also possible that both derived independently from the same English MS. tradition):

By the figurative mystery of this holy Stole or Vestment, I will cloath me with the armour of Salvation in the strength of the highest, Ancor, Amacor, Amides, Theodonias, Anitor.  That my desired end may be effected through thy strength Adonai, to whom the praise and glory will for ever belong.

In "The Magick and Magicall Elements" (Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 142r) this has become:

Ancor; Amacor; Amides; Theodonias; Anitor; by the power of the blessed Trinity wherewith we are through faith dignified with Cœlestiall Supremisie & command over all spirits of what nature, orders, office, degree, Mansions, or place of being soever they are: Grant o Lorde that I putting on this vestment of safty, may powerfully (together with these my Associats) be defended from all the Assualts, surprises, frights, feares, & Amasements of wicked, or evill spirits, and that by the virtue & efficacy of our invocations we may effectually move, call forth, & constraine those Elementall Spirits, or Spirituall Powers, as we shall thereby move or call-forthe, whether by nature, name, orders, or office, visibly & peacibly to apeare unto us & faithfully to fullfill & to performe unto us whatsoever we shall accordingly request, & command them; without the least of hurt or iniury or any other evill deed to be don unto us, or to this place, or to any other place, or person whatsoever, through thee, o holy Adonai, whose mercy Endureth for ever, Amen. 

While it is widely theorised that the authors and users of magical texts in late mediæval Europe were typically renegade monks or low-rank members of the clergy, some of the language used in the late 17th-century English writings (specifically the "Invocation of Angels" texts and the materials collected in "Longobardus") suggest the writers of the latter were rather lawyers, or possibly failed law students trying to make a living as cunning-folk, treasure-hunters and the like.

Lack of progress report 2021.11.05

Blech, another quarter with no updates.  Mostly I've been getting sidetracked, and I also needed to do a computer rebuild in August when my hard drive died (not much actually lost, fortunately).  Only managed a few more pages of Trithemius Redivivus (there are a lot of unfamiliar abbreviations used and the scribe was frequently very lax in crossing 't's -- the same thing that got us "Seal of Adonay" in the Goëtia).  Debating posting the bits of 3824 that I *have* finished (fol. 3-79, 89-120), but this has a great deal of overlap with the parts already published in David Rankine's Book of Treasure Spirits.

The project that I'm provisionally titling "On the Invocation of Angels," to comprise typesets of the angel-magic / crystallomancy texts from Sloane MSS. 3821 and 3825 (i.e., the Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, Janua Magica Reserata, the "Operations of the Angles of the Aire," "Celestial Confirmations of Terrestrial Observations," and "A Select Treatise" (the latter two being invocations of planetary angels and Intelligences) is currently still in the vague "wish list" category, since large parts of my copies of the MSS. are completely unreadable.

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made

Final section of the treasure-huntin', crystal-gazin', spirit-summonin', fairy-pesterin' compendium that makes up BL Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 89-120 has now been re-typeset.  The title of this post alludes to figures of magic circles on fol. 116v / 117r, to be used for summoning a set of seven "Regall Spirits," Macharioth Rex, Isus Rex, Jonathon Rex, Acharon (also written Acheron) Rex, Magoth Rex, Achachardus Rex and Ysquy (or Isquy) Rex, concerning whom no other information is given save the names of their "Familiars": around the borders of three we find the phrase "Neon Dominus Deus Sabaoth" (others having "Neon Hagios Agla Messias," "Neon Adonay Sabaoth Tetragrammaton," "Neon Ost Theon Sother Ost Mother Emanual Neon Sabaoth," and the seventh only has two crosses in the border).

Now to make a start on "Trithemius Redivivus" and wonder how much the redactor of that actually understood the Steganographia.

EDIT: a similar set of figures to those mentioned, although none of them completely identical to those in Sloane 3824, appear in the Folger "Book of Magic," pp. 148-151.  Most have "Neon" (one "Noen") in the border text.  An earlier version of the "Experiment of the spirit Birto" also appears in V.b. 26, p. 164: in that, the elaborate figure of the dragon or wyvern is seemingly meant to represent the spirit itself and there is no instruction to draw the thing as part of the process.

Lack of progress report.

Back online again & after some weeks of slacking, re-playing Ghost of Tsushima, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Horizon Zero Dawn, my main computer is up and running again (tho' I did have to download a copy of the manual for the thing's mainboard before I could start it up) and I've actually kinda-sorta resumed serious work on Sloane 3824 (as well as toyed with the concept of making a collection of the "Invocation of Angels" texts from 3821 & 3825, but that will require a legible copy of the latter).

The date of 1649 claimed for Sloane MS. 3824 in A Book of Treasure Spirits is, as regards the two major divisions of the collection, at least a decade too early.  The statement "now it is June 1649" occurs on fol. 48r in the course of a somewhat rambling piece arguing for the possibility of human colloquy with Angels.  Even if this statement is credible, which is doubtful for reasons to be discussed, it would refer to when that particular passage was first written: however, that section of 3824 is not the author's holograph but a copy made by Elias Ashmole from another (now apparently lost) MS., as indicated on fol. 31r.

The immediately preceding section of 3824 (fol. 23-29) consists of a set of conjurations and rubric for evoking spirits, crudely nailed together from the Heptameron and the Ars Goëtia.  The materials from the former work are verbatim or near-verbatim from the 1665 edition of Robert Turner's translation of Henry Cornelius Agrippa his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, of Geomancie, &c. &c. &c. (the 1655 edition left the conjurations untranslated) even down to an eccentricity of orthography, giving a terminus a quo for Ashmole's copy of "Longobardus" and the material following it in the same MS. book.

The material on fol. 32-52 consists of excerpts from a copy of the angel-magic treatise Janua Magica Reserata, which were copied by Ashmole as not being in his other copy of that work (now Sloane 3825).  The Janua contains extensive borrowings from the translation of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy by "J.F." (as Ashmole notes on 3824 fol. 30r), published in 1651.  It also contains significant cribs from John Dee's spirit diaries, as published in 1659 by Meric Casaubon: indeed, the "June 1649" statement occurs directly before one such passage.  The credibility of the date thus depends on the likelihood of (a) the passage in which it occurs having been originally written independently and later incorporated into the Janua and (b) the author having had access to Dee's spirit diaries in the Cotton library a decade prior to their publication.  Given further that the general thrust of the entire section seems to be arguing for not merely the possibility of colloquy with Angels, but the compatibility of the angel-magic practices with the local form of Official Christianity, it makes far more sense to view it as a response to polemics like Casaubon's introduction to T&FR.  This is leaving aside the high likelihood that the Janua was of common authorship with Clavicula Tabularum Enochi / "The Practice of the Tables" (Sloane MS. 307 / Sloane MS. 3821 fol. 2-157) which demonstrably depends on Casaubon's typeset for reasons that have been repeated ad nauseam.

The other major section of 3824, fol. 89-120 (a typeset of which forms the bulk of Book of Treasure Spirits) was an originally independent MS. book that was bound up with other items at some point prior to Hans Sloane acquiring the thing in Jekyll's estate sale.  There are a few things giving it a terminus a quo: some borrowings from T&FR, which all occur towards the end (fol. 116r, 120v, discussed in previous posts).  A design for a magic circle, in a similar hand to the rest of the book but on a loose leaf (fol. 105, not counted in that division's original pagination) is based on Agrippa's scale of the number 10 and perpetuates a printing error in the 1651 English edition, referring to the third Kabbalistic Sephirah as "Binah or prina" (in the table of the scale on p. 214 the correct Hebrew spelling and the familiar Romanized form are given; the misprint "prina" occurs on p. 368 (Book III cap. 10), where the 1533, 1550, 1567, 1578, 1600 and 1630 Latin editions (those were just the ones I checked) have "bina").

While this last is no further help in dating the MS., the final piece in that section, an untitled account of the three chief infernal spirits and four Kings of the quarters from the De officiis spirituum tradition, has strong parallels with the "Offices of the Spirits" section of the Folger "Book of Magic" (pp. 73 sqq.) although the conjurations and rubric have been rewritten (removing Roman Catholic elements for example), the descriptions of the chiefs have been redacted (omitting to mention that Beelzebub is wont to kill a magician who summons him without using the proper invocation and suffumigation, or that Satan will pester the invocant to pray for him to be restored to his former throne and place) and the bulk of the description of Egyn, King of the North, has unaccountably been omitted, the text cutting off (possibly due to a missing page in the scribe's source text) after the description of his nostrils.

Progress (?) report

Going to be offline for a bit starting in a couple of days, at least until I can get net access set up at the place I'm moving into, so here's a brief update on progress with the Sloane 3824 project.

Primary key-entry on the two biggest divisions of the MS. is done (i.e. the notebook in Ashmole's hand forming fol. 3-79 and the book of spirit "experiments" forming fol. 89-120: all or most of the latter is also in A Book of Treasure Spirits though).  All figures from the first section and most (barring a set of seven seals of planetary "kings") from the second redrawn / cleaned up.  Still have all of the talisman figures (37 or so) + accompanying text from fol. 80 & 84-88, and everything in fol. 121-154 (a partial English translation of the Steganographia, and a variant Heptameron) to do.

I did at least manage to work out who the "L. C. E. of S." mentioned on 116r & 120v was.  The date of 1607 in the former citation, coupled with the reference coming immediately after the description of a spirit copied from A True & Faithful Relation suggested checking the largely-ignored final fragment of Dee's Spirit Diaries for that year.  Dee, reduced to poverty, was at the time trying to hawk his services to Lord Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, a high official in the court of King James.  During a Spirit Action with Bartholomew Hickman on the 24th of March, "Raphael" declared:

"... it was the will of God […] to suffer the heart of thy supreme head and governour, under God  to be hardened against thee, that you art no better account made of unto him, but to be such an one that doth deal with Devils and by Sorcery, as you commonly term them Witchcraft: and who doth, and who hath informed him, to be thus evil and hardly informed against thee, but only the Devil, and by the hatred of thy secret enemy whom thou knowest (Salisbury I mean) and all malice and enemies that he can by his Devils, Maserien, Hermcloe, the four wicked ones, the which are accounted the four Rulers of the Air, whose names be Ories, Egym, Paynim, and Mayrary: They be the Devils that he doth deal withal, that he through their enticing and his, he thinketh to be pleasant and good wisdom that he receiveth at their hands; That he and his Devil do seek thy overthrow in all good things, and doth and shall, so far forth as God will suffer them, seek all the malice and hindrance in all good causes to be done to thy good." 

(T&FR p. *34, Cotton Appendix XLVI part ii fol. 229r). 

Maserien and Hermcloe are the spirits named at the foot of Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 116r as being familiar to the "L. C. E. of S.," and those variant names of the familiar four demon Kings of the quarters are mentioned on fol. 120v in connection with the same initials.

Addenda et Scholia (2)

So, this is probably flogging a horse that's been dead for over a decade, but looking through some stuff on the "Rudd manuscripts" (BL Harley MSS. 6479-6486), noticed an interesting anomaly.

The numbering in the Harleian collection does not reflect the order in which the MSS. were produced; 6482 was apparently the earliest; the frontispiece is signed by Smart and dated 1699, the material extracted from the Janua Magica Reserata dated 1712.

Harley 6483, the "Dr. Rudd" Lemegeton, is internally dated 1712/13 in the colophon, and numbered as being the 36th through 138th "Sheet Dr. Rudd" (the first 35 presumably comprising the "Nine Hyerarchies of Angels" in 6482: McLean's typeset in A Treatise on Angel Magic does not reproduce those notes and I have not seen the MS.).

 The colophon also indicates "The Rosie Crucian Secrets" as being next in the series.

The Rosie Crucian Secrets, Harley 6485 (online here) is dated 1713 in the colophon, its 501 folios said to be copied from the "Sheet[s] [of] Dr. Dee" (numbering of said "sheets" restarts with each major division).  Since it includes material adapted from John Heydon's Elharvarena, an alchemical-Rosicruican work published in 1665, and the English translation (pub. 1656) of Maier's Themis Aurea (first pub. 1618), this is . . . unlikely.

Harley MSS. 6480, 6481 (largely plagiarised from Heydon), 6484 (plagiarised from an English translation of Gaffarel's Curiosites Inouyes) and 6486 (the Chemical Wedding, plagiarised from Foxcroft's translation) are dated 1714.

Anyway, back to 6483.  This is a quarto, meaning each "sheet" is folded twice before being sewn & cut, thus comprising four leaves, 8 pages.  Each "Sheet Dr. Rudd" corresponds exactly to four leaves in Smart's copy -- with one exception.  The "nine and fortieth sheet" begins on fol. 53r; the "fiftieth sheet" on fol. 59r.  While it not a priori outrageous that, depending on the scribe's methods and desire to save paper, there would not be an exact, 1:1 correspondence in pagination between the source text and the copy, it is odd that there is this single discrepancy of two leaves in a manuscript of over four hundred folios, particularly as it comes in the spirit catalogue of the Ars Goëtia, which Smart laid out consistently with the entry for each spirit taking an entire leaf (frequently leaving all or part of the verso blank; owing to the heavy line-work used on the Spirit characters combined with thin paper, there is serious bleed-through).  This strongly suggests that Smart's Lemegeton copy-text was not laid out thus, and the "Sheets Dr. Rudd" were his invention, probably noted down in the MS. book after copying the main text.

Of Keys and Gates (5)

After much prevarication, I've uploaded the Janua material from Sloane 3824 to Scribd.  There are almost certainly typos & transcription errors remaining in this, but running a spellcheck on it is of limited use given that I took a conscious decision not to modernise or standardise spelling in the transcript.

As for the rest of the MS., currently about 2/3 of the way through the page count on text transcription, but lagging some way behind that on cleaning up / redrawing figures.

On closer examination, the material on fol. 22-29 looks less like an intermediate stage in the Heptameron being turned into the conjurations & rubric of the Goëtia (as I originally conjectured on skim-reading it) and more like someone took material from those two works and crudely nailed them together: it follows the Heptameron closely, with certain modifications and omissions in the rubric, and the design of the Pentacle garbled, up to the end of the Exorcism of the Aërial Spirits, then cuts into the conjurations and rubric of the Ars Goëtia beginning with "The Constraint" that follows the second conjuration and carrying on to the end, then adding a concluding prayer.  It also, owing to a heavy dependence on the 1665 Robert Turner translation of the Heptameron (the 1655 edition left most of the conjurations &c. in Latin, remember), gives an earliest possible date for that section of the MS., and probably the following 50 leaves too.

The "Second Parte of the Art of King Solomon" on fol. 53-71 appears to be an incomplete copy of a variant version of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia.  There are comments apparently indicating lists of spirit names and seals were in the source text but not copied; Ashmole also left a large space on fol. 54r for the figure of the compass, and wrote in the caption for the diagram but didn't copy the figure itself.

[EDIT: Fixed a copy-paste error I made when first redrawing the diagram.  There is a much more serious issue with the figure, dating back to the original compilation of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia: the 16 "Princes" with fixed compass points should be evenly distributed around the compass, i.e. Padiel in ESE, Aseliel in SSE, Gediel in SSW, &c., as they are in Lib. I of the Steganographia (see table and figure at end of the first chapter) from which the whole scheme derives.  This is likely a result of a level of lost-in-translation with terminology for intermediate compass directions.]

Passages that also appear in the Sloane MS. 3825 Lemegeton generally closely agree with that copy, but conjurations for the chief spirits are given at length (there are minor verbal variations, but they generally differ only in names and compass directions), whereas the Sloane Lemegeton MSS. just give the opening of each conjuration, with a general form at the end with names and the opening lines to be varied as appropriate, completely different from the formula in Sloane 3824.

The transcription cuts off abruptly at the bottom of fol. 70r, in the conjuration of the 16th spirit, Cabariel; there is a catch-word at the bottom of the page, but the verso is apparently blank.  On fol. 71 is what appears to be a form of oath to be sworn by a summoned spirit once you've actually got it to show up (not in the Sloane Lemegeton versions).

Meddling with the Goëtia again (8)

Credit to the author of the "Brother Enoch's Goëtia" blog for pointing this out.  Now I need to fix the damn font, and I can't find the vector art files for it anywhere.  Still, I *have* fixed the colour plate, and the latest revision is now up on Scribd.

So, on the plates for the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia as originally printed, at the bottom of the figure of the Hexagram, is a barely-readable note mentioning that the glyph in the bottom point is "often reversed."

In fact, on checking, it turns out the "reversed" form appears in all three copies of the Lemegeton in the Sloane collection, as well as the 19th-century copy in Wellcome MS. 3203, made by a friend of Fred Hockley from a copy Hockley made from a late 17th-century MS. in two volumes (lacking the Ars Notoria), suggesting the form in the main figure was an error by Mathers or the engraver who made up the plates.  The figure (along with several others) is completely missing in the late & mucked-about Lemegeton copied by the infamous Peter Smart (Harley MS. 6483).

At the bottom of p. 212 of the Folger "Book of Magic" (Folger MS. V.b. 26, late 16th century, roughly contemporary with the publication of Scot's Discoverie & significantly pre-dating the redaction of the Lemegeton) occur two figures which appear to be earlier versions of the hexagram and pentagram of the Ars Goëtia (the similarity was noticed by a 20th-century owner of the latter part of the MS., who copied the figures from the De Laurence piracy of the Goëtia onto the back flyleaf).  The version of the hexagram lacks the letters A G L A outside, and TE / TRA / GRA / MA / TON (sic) is arranged around the lower five points, with SIGNUM in the upper.  Where the Ars Goëtia version has AGLA, the Folger version has four glyphs, the lower two bearing a close resemblance to the characters in the bottom point of the Ars Goëtia hexagram before Mathers flipped it.

The same four glyphs appear, in a row, as to be inscribed on the blade of a sword or dagger, on p. 213 of the Folger Book of Magic.  And also as part of two magical diagrams in a 15th-century magical miscellany, Bodleian MS. Rawlinson D. 252.  And eventually understanding dawns . . . they're the Tetragrammaton, IHVH, stylised practically beyond recognition through repeated copying, to the point where the designer of the figure in the Folger MS. didn't realise they were Hebrew and so read them left to right to arrange around the hexagram.

* * * * * * * * *

So, while it's been generally recognised for a long time that the Second Conjuration of the Goëtia was an adaptation of the exorcismus spirituum aërorurum of the Heptameron (with most of the final section displaced into "The Constraint"), I only recently realised just how far the antecedents of that go.

The Heptameron, as Peterson and Véronèse have shown, is basically an edited and rearranged version of the pseudo-Abano Lucidarium (variously Lucidarium in arte Magica, Lucidarium artis nigromantice, Elucidarium Necromantiæ, "Elucidation of Necromancy"), which in turn borrows from the Liber Iuratus, Liber Salomonis (Sepher Razielis) & other sources.

Now in the other main source for the Goëtia, the Pseudomonarchia Dæmonum, we find in the description of two of the higher-ranking spirits (Byleth and Belial) references to something called the vinculum spirituum (Spirits' Chain), which the exorcist might need to read in order to get them to submit.  The redactor of the Ars Goëtia, working from Scot's English translation, evidently was aware that this was needed for the ritual, but had no idea what the hell it was, so just made something up.

The joke is, if you get to the point in the Goëtia ritual where you're instructed to read the "Spirits' Chain," you've already rehearsed the vinculum spirituum.

In the Antipalus Maleficorum of Trithemius (written 1508 but not published until much later), the Abbot of Spanheim lists various works of demonic magic that were circulating in manuscript at the time, some now known, others possibly lost to the ravages of time and the zeal of the Inquisition.  Among these (immediately after the De officiis spirituum attributed to Solomon) is the Vinculum Spirituum, by which, we are told, many arrogant and lost folk believe they can constrain daemons to obey them.  The opening words of which text, are said to be De vinculo spirituum non est silendum.

Well, it turns out that one isn't lost.  Texts with that title and incipit, or something very similar (reading solvendum for silendum) are extant in two 15th-century manuscripts in the Bayern Staatsbibliothek at Munich, to wit Clm 849, the famous "Munich Manual of Necromancy" (from which the above image is taken), and Clm 10085, ostensibly an orthodox manual of exorcism.  Clm 849 also refers to the text as Vinculum Salomonis, under which title it is cited in a 16th-century Key of Solomon version in English and Latin that survives in BL Sloane MS. 3847.  

After a brief prologue, the actual text begins.  In Clm 10085: Per potentissimum et corroboratum nomen domini dei el forte et admirabile vos coniuro et exorzio et contestor . . . [at which point my ability to read heavily abbreviated mediæval Latin blackletter gave out, but I could make out "per eum qui dixit et facta sunt" a bit further on].  Fortunately, a typeset of Clm 849 has been published (Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, Stroud: Sutton, 1997; reprinted Penn State University Press, 2012).  On examination of which, it turns out that the general structure of the Vinculum is a long string of citations of names of God, of Hebrew, Greek or unknown origin, by which various figures from the Jewish legends are said to have become wise, been saved, wrought various wonders, &c.; and later, a threat to curse the spirit, deprive it of its office, joy and place, hurl it into the abyss & and bind it in eternal fire and a lake of fire and brimstone until the day of the last judgement unless it gets its arse in gear and appears before the circle, sine mora.

In other words, it's an ancestor of the Exorcismus spirituum aërorum of the Lucidarium / Heptameron, and thence of the Second Conjuration and Constraint of the Ars Goëtia.

* * * * * * * * *

EDIT: Every. Damn. Time.  I upload the updates & then find something significant I missed.  Taking another stab at the Vinculum version in Clm 10085, I find (fol. 6v, lines 8-11): et per annulos Salomonis signa (?) et sigilla cum quibus inclusit trecentos septuaginta duos reges dyabolicos cum eorum legionibus.  Assuming I read that trecentos correctly, looks like this version of Solomon was a bit more ambitious that the one in the Liber Officiorum version copied by Wier, who only managed to seal up 72 kings with their legions in a glass vessel.  Either "72" was earlier and someone in one line of transmission decided that it wasn't impressive enough, or "372" was, but "trecentos" got misread as something else at some stage of transcription.

Also in a different procedure in Clm 849 (fol. 45v) we find et per hac duo nomina Ioth & Nabnoth per quæ Salomon constringebat in vase vitreo demones.

On the other hand, the Solomon cited in a spirit binding in Cambridge Additional MS. 3544 (typeset in F. Young, The Cambridge Book of Magic) was less ambitious, only managing tres dæmones in vase vitreo.

[Images from Clm 849 & 10085 taken from posts at https://bildsuche.digitale-sammlungen.de/ -- released under Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial / Share-Alike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).]

Of Keys and Gates (4)

Well, I've finished doing the main key-entry on the additional excerpts from the Janua in Sloane 3824.  Still needs some checking, layout work & a few more attempts at making out doubtful or near-illegible words.  In some of the longer passages it seemed that the copyist's handwriting was gradually deteriorating as his brain melted at the sheer inanity of what he was transcribing, or the writer's tendency to go off on two-page diatribes at a complete tangent from whatever the ostensible point was.  Or maybe I'm just projecting here.

In excerpt 'K', "Dr. R," if that really was the author's name, is so insistent on refuting the notion that the the spirits of the middle or terrestrial order were the souls or ghosts of dead humans, that amidst all the ranting and rambling we never actually get any indication of a positive view on what the damn things actually are.

Possibly these sections were not "additions" at all, but part of the original work that were deliberately redacted out by a later editor / copyist as adding little of value to it.

It is also hard to believe the statement "it is now June 1649" (fol. 48r) when the ensuing text is copied out of a book published a decade later, as Ashmole noted in the margin, complete with a page reference.  

[In any case, Ashmole's copy was made in 1665 or later, since the previous item in the notebook demonstrably depends on the second edition of Robert Turner's translation of the supplementary texts to Agrippa (Henry Cornelius Agrippa his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, of Geomancie, Magical Elements of Peter de Abano, &c. &c. &c.) published that year.]

Seriously though, reading those passages raises the question: who was the author talking to?  It seems . . . unlikely that the Janua was written for publication (and of course it was not published until over 300 years after its composition).  On the other hand, its form, and the level of structure & organisation shown, certainly in Sloane 3825, is utterly unlike what we find in magical MS works that appear to have been for the private use of individual practitioners (compare the Folger Book of Magic, the Munich Manual of Necromancy, BL Sloane MS. 3851, Bodleian Rawlinson D.252, Rawlinson D.253 & e Mus. 173) which are light on theory (a few roughly translated or summarised excerpts from Agrippa are in Sloane 3851) and lighter on multi-page screeds trying to justify their practices.

The material was perhaps a response to anti-magical polemics of the time, that best known today probably being Meric Casaubon's preface to his publication of Dee's spirit diaries, which latter characterised the spirit actions as "A Work of Darknesse" and argued at great length that Dee & Kelly's "Angels" were not fraud or delusion, but "false lying Spirits" sent by "the Divel of Hell (as we commonly term him)": & the main intent was to crush any doubts that might have existed in the minds of the readers (or indeed of the author) as to the compatibility of the angel-magic practices with whatever form of Official Christianity formed the basis of their religious faith.  The response to polemics like Casaubon's also had a practical aspect: a significant part of the "Isagogicall Observations" following the Janua's theoretical section (Sloane MS. 3825 fol. 40r-47r) and most of the "Further Instructions" following the "First Key" (53v-56r) is taken up with the question of just how to distinguish such "illuding Spirits" from "Angels of Light,"[1] thus reassuring the reader that it was possible for them to tell the difference if they followed the correct procedure

[1] For a detailed study, based on the copy of those sections in Harley MS. 6482, see Egil Asprem, "False, Lying Spirits and Angels of Light: Ambiguous Mediation in Dr. Rudd's Seventeenth-Century Treatise on Angel Magic."

Of Keys and Gates (3)

So far I've identified four main sources for the preliminary "theoretical" section of Janua Magica Reserata.

1. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Englished by "J.F." (John French) and printed in London in 1651.  Ashmole spotted cribs from five chapters & recorded them in what is now Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 30r.  (I. 11 on Ideas; III. 10 on the 9 orders of Angels; III. 24 for various sets of angel names; III 36 & 37 on the soul, man being made after the image of God, &c.).  There are more . . . probably amounting to well over half the word-count of those 37 leaves.  The verbal agreement with "J.F." is at a level that makes independent translation implausible in the extreme, and the perpetuation of printing errors in the 1651 edition (e.g., spelling the name of the third Kabbalistic Sephirah as "Prina") makes it unlikely that the compiler copied this material from Dr. French's translation while the latter was still in manuscript.

2. A True & Faithful Relation of what passed for many yeers between Dr. John Dee . . . and some Spirits, edited by Meric Casaubon and printed in London in 1659.

• In the section "Of Angels & Spirits" on fol. 18r, the claim is ascribed to "Johannes Trithemius, the learned Abbot of Spanheim, in Lib: polygraph" that "never any Good Angel was read of, to have appeared in the forme of a woman."  I cannot state with absolute certainty that such a claim does not appear in the Polygraphiae libri sex, although given that volume's subject matter (it is generally recognised as the first printed work on cryptography) it seems unlikely; where it does appear is in the same author's Liber octo quæstionum, quas illi dissolvendas proposuit Maximilianus Cæsar (responses to a series of questions on theological and other matters which had been posed to him by the Emperor, first printed in 1515).  In the course of answering question 6, on the power of witches (De potestate maleficarum), the abbot of Spanheim referred to various classical and German legends of water-spirits in female form, Naiads, Nereids, Wasserfrauen, then continued, “Sancti autem Angeli quoniam affectione nunquam variantur uniformiter semper apparent in forma virili.  Nusquam enim legimus scriptus, quod bonus spiritus in forma fit visus muliebri aut bestiæ cuiuscunque, sed semper in specie virili.”  What does this have do to with Dee and his spirits, you may wonder?  Well, the Janua's response to this, beginning "It is evident that the Angels of God are incomprehensible to those that are their inferiours" is a near-verbatim quote (with a few omissions, single-word changes (e.g. "they" for "we"), and variations in punctuation) from the speech of Galvah (described as "a woman like an old maid in a red Peticote, and with a red silk upper bodies, her hair rould about like a Scottish woman, the same being yellow" -- T&FR, p. 10) in response to Dee calling her out with the above-quoted line from Lib. oct. quæst. (the speech is on p. 13 of T&FR).

• In the section "A Brief Summary of several orders & Hierarchies of some particular Angels & Spirits" after referring to various traditional magical & astrological divisions of things such as the four Elements, the 28 Mansions of the Moon, &c., continues (fol. 19v-20r) "[God] hath again divided the Heavens into Eight & forty Angles or parts, Eighteen whereof are Superiours & Cœlestiall, & the other thirty more inferiour & Airerial [sic]; whose Mantions are not alike, nor poweres Equal, for that he hath Miraculously placed Eighteen Divisions above the fiery Region in the Heavens, [...] the Other thirty Ayeriall Angells [read "Angles"] Orbs or Divisions, he hath Originally Decreed, and amongst other wonderfull works of the Creation, orderly placed, one above another, from the Earth to the fiery Region, in the Highermost part of the Air, wherein are Located ninety one Angelicall princes or spirituall governors, & many other Subservient  Angels under them, who are spirits of the Air, not Rejected but Dignified; And who are governed by the twelve Angels of the twelve tribes: which twelve Angels are againe governed, by the Seven Mighty Angels, which stand before the Most High and Holy Throne, & unspeakable presence, as Dispositers of the Heavenly Decrees, preordinately Determined, who transmits the Divine will & pleasure of the Highest, unto the twelve tributary Angels, & who againe Distributeth & passeth the same unto the ninty one Ayeriall princes, unto whom the Governments of the Earth is by Divine Determination Delivered [...] & whose offices are [...] to bring in, & againe Dispose of Terrestriall governers & Governments, & vary the nature of things with the variation of Every moment, unto whome the providence of the Eternal judgment of God is already opened [...]" (and so on, for another page and a half, specifically mentioning "the Cœlestiall Angel Ave"): compare for example T&FR p. 139-140 on "the 91 Princes and spiritual Governors."

• The series of exhortations and admonitions on fol. 23v to 25r (immediately prior to the table of Sephiroth, and following a lengthy extract / paraphrase from Of Occult Philosophy Book III chapter 20, "Of the annoyance of evil spirits &c.") is drawn from various sermons of Gabriel, Nalvage, and a "man with a black Gown" who didn't give a name (T&FR, pp, 160, 162, 161, 89, 118, 76-7, 44).

• In "Some Further Instructions" (fol. 53v-56r; cf. McLean, A Treatise on Angel Magic, pp. 183-6, "A Second Introduction," Dee's interrogation of Ave (Action of 1584.06.20, T&FR p.169) is quoted (with the names removed) as an example of how to ascertain the genuineness of supposed angelic manifestations.

• Phrases from the English of the Claves Angelicæ appear in the invocations or "Celestial Keys"; "make us partakers of undefiled knowledge," "we the servants of the same your God," "we move you [...] in power and presence, whose workes shall be a song of Honour, & the praise of your God, in your Creation."

Of course, this raises the vexed question of whether the compiler could have had access to Dee's spirit diaries in the Cotton Library and made these extensive copies prior to their publication in 1659.  All I can confidently say about this is that if he was the author of "The Practice of the Tables" then he didn't (Coronzom says hi).

3. Arbatel: de Magia Veterum.  In the section of "Beneficiall Aphorism" on fol. 10v-13r, nos. 2,-6, 8 & 10 (possibly some of the others) are quoted, paraphrased or adapted from the aphorisms of the Arbatel.  There is enough variation in wording with Robert Turner's translation (pub. 1655) to make an independent translation from the Latin believable.  Additionally, this was the most likely source for the Olympic Planetary Spirits, whose names are given on fol. 33v in the chapter on names of Celestial Angels and Sacred Intelligences.

4. Pseudo-Paracelsus, Archidoxes Magicae.  After a description of spirits of the middle or terrestrial order cribbed from Agrippa lib. iii cap. 32 (fol. 38r), the Janua enters into a discussion of "certain things vulgarly called Gnomi" which closely parallels the discussion on pp. 51-2 of On the Supreme Mysteries of Nature, translated by Robert Turner and printed in London in 1656 (again, there is enough variation with Turner's text to suggest an independent translation).  This passage in turn was founded on the doctrine of elementals in Paracelsus' Liber de nymphis, sylvanis, pygmæus et salamandris &c., which in turn derived from and systematized various German folk-traditions.  As it happens, a substantial excerpt from De nymphis in English translation appears in Harley 6482, shortly before the start of the excerpt from the Janua (Treatise on Angel Magic, pp. 153-168).

Additionally, some minor use was made of pseudo-Abano, Heptameron seu elementa Magica.  The lists of Angels of the Sephiroth &c., while mostly following Agrippa's scale of the number 10, counter-change the attributions of Raphaël and Michaël, referring the former to Hod and Mercury, the latter to Tiphareth and Sol, in order to fit the planetary scheme of the Heptarmeron.  While on its own this is inconclusive, as pseudo-Abano was not the only source to use that arrangement, a set of angels mentioned in the conjurations of the seven days of the week in the Heptameron / Lucidarium, Booël, Pastor, Acimoy, Salamia, Dagiel, Tegra and Orphaniel are cited in the third through ninth Keys, and Tegra appears as Tetra, following a misprint in the "Lyons" editions of Agrippa's Opera (carried over into Turner's translation).  There are other parallel passages in those conjurations, but these ultimately derive from the account of the seven days of Creation in Genesis I.

One thing which almost certainly does derive from English magical manuscript traditions rather than printed sources appears at the very end of the "theoretical" section (fol. 40r): the Seven Faerie Sisters, here spelt Lilla, Restilia, Foca, Tolla (possibly an error for Folla, the scribe's capital 'F' and 'T' are very similar in form), Affrica, Julia and Venulla.  These are also mentioned in the Folger "Book of Magic,"  Folger X.d. 234, Sloane MSS. 1727 and 3824, Bodleian e Mus. 173, Chetham's A.4.98 and elsewhere.

Of keys and gates (2)

Since the copy of Sloane 3825 I'm using at the moment has large sections that are completely unreadable, I'm not current in a position to make my own transcription of the Magick Gate Unbarr'd (Janua Magica Reserata), which means that I'm working from someone else's (very much in copyright) edition; hence, while I have found a number of readings I disagree with in sections I *have* been able to check, I won't be publishing the actual text any time soon (i.e. unless & until I can get my own copy of the microfilm & make better prints from it, or the BL digitises the original & puts it online).  What I have been able to do is to redraw some of the seals of the Archangels, which also gave me a reason to start learning a new vector graphics program (the dodgy copy of Corel Draw that I was using way back doesn't work on any version of Windows from the past decade).  Followeth those I've done so far:

* * *

* * *

Those of you who have Adam McLean's Treatise on Angel Magic, which contains part of the Janua, will note that these are totally different to the designs in that work.  While Peter Smart, the scribe of Harley 6482, could write the square Hebrew letters better than many writers or copyists of magical MSS. of the period (and thus never, for example, rendered the Tetragrammaton as רהרה, RAHRAH), and also understood how the system of vowel points worked -- his other known writings include a copy of a text on Hebrew grammar and pronunciation -- he introduced multiple mis-spellings, most of which are explicable by him not knowing the original orthography of the names and back-transliterating them into pointed Hebrew from Romanized forms; thus we see spurious extra alephs in the -iah Angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash, Chokmah (חכמה) written הוחמא, Sabaoth (צבאות) as שבות, &c.

Meanwhile I'm gradually getting the hang of Elias Ashmole's scrawl — hey, at least it's not a 16th-century secretary hand — and plodding through the additional text sections of the Janua in Sloane 3824.  That and trying to identify the cribs from "Dr. French his translation of Cornelius Agrippa his Occult Philosophy" that E.A., not having the luxury of a digitised copy of the text with a Ctrl+F function, missed.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (7)

Correction / clarification to the previous post about the proto-Goëtia in Sloane MS. 3824 (now I actually have a copy of the MS., admittedly as a badly-digitised microfilm): the last spirit in the De Officiis fragment, is given as Sondenna, aliter Sendenna, which matches the printed TFR, thus removing the need for repeated copying.  Moral: never rely on dodgy copies of other people's transcriptions.  Also, the short entry following regarding two spirits, Maserien and Hermcloe who "were the Servants And familiars of the L. C. E. of S. 1607" is explicable with reference to TFR, page *34 (Action of 1607.03.24, Cotton Appendix XLVI part ii. fol. 229r).

The characters of Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius are written very small, the same height as a line of the text or slightly higher.

For comparison purposes, here are those characters (cleaned up / retouched from images of the MS.), followed by the Mathers versions:

From my initial studies of Sloane 3824, material in this collection does seem to be an important predecessor, working notes even, for the first two books of the Lemegeton.  

Fol. 22r-29v contain a series of "Consecrations & Benedictions" leading into a series of conjurations addressed to the "spirit Vassago or Usago."  This borrows heavily from the Heptameron; a slightly simplifed version of the "pentacle" appears, and the first conjuration is an English translation of pseudo-Abano's Exorcismus Spirituum Aërorum.  After that, the conjurations and rubric closely follows the Goëtia through to the license to depart; following the general instruction to "[make] prayer to God for the great blessing he hath bestowed upon you in granting you your desires and delivering you from  all the malice of the enemy the devil," an actual form of prayer is given (concluding with the Gloria in Latin).

EDIT: the text of this section is the Heptameron on its way to becoming the Ars Goëtia.  However, this particular copy is, well, a copy: the materials in the first 80 leaves or so of Sloane MS 3824 appear to be a collection of copies made by Elias Ashmole from various other MS. sources, probably at least three different: (a) "Longobardus," a collection of extremely verbose & legalistic conjurations for traditional concerns such as finding treasure & recovering stolen goods, (b) a partial copy of the Janua Magica Reserata with additional passages not found in Sloane MS. 3825 and (c) a proto-Lemegeton including the material mentioned above, and the incomplete Ars Theurgia-Goëtia mentioned below.

Fol. 53r-71v are titled "The Second Parte of the Art of King Solomon,"  The opening of this section (up to 54r) is more or less identical to the preamble of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia, although the figure of the compass is either missing, or was too faint to show up in the crappy scans I'm using (there is a blank space where it should be, and the text refers to it).  This is followed by descriptions of Carnesiell, Caspiel, Amenadiel, Demoriel, Pamersiel, Padiel, Camuel, Aseliel, Barmiel, Gedial, Asyriel, Maseriel, Magaras, Dorochiel, Vsiel and Cabariel (i.e. 16 of the 20 chief spirits with fixed abodes, and none of the wanderers); only a few are given seals, and the names and seals of their chief subordinates are AWOL.  The conjuration for each is given at length, although these generally vary only in the name and the direction to which the Spirit is assigned.  At the end is another lengthy conjuration addressed to Padiel, with an oath to be sworn by the spirit. 

As previously remarked, fol. 110r-111v contains "An Experiment of the Spirit Vassago, who may be called upon to appear in a Christall Stone, or Glass or otherwise without," including a character for Vassago slightly simpler than the Goëtia version.  A similar "experiment" for Agares follows.  Following a ritual to cause the spirit Bleth to appear in a glass of water, are brief descriptions of eight more spirits (115v-116r), with simple seals for five of them, including Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius, the remaining additions to the Goëtia.

On fol. 116v are given "The Names of severall Spirits, both with and without their Characters."  25 spirits have characters next to their names, most fairly simple; while some have similar general morphology to characters of subordinate spirits in the Theurgia-Goëtia, I have yet to definitely identify any as being the same, and several of the names are unreadable in my copy.

Halfway down 117r begins an account of the chief infernal spirits and Kings of the quarters, an important part of the De Officiis Spirituum tradition that was apparently redacted out by Wier in order to make the Pseudomonarchia unuseable.  This concludes with a generic conjuration for the Kings and their chief ministers (to be varied by substituting appropriate names and directions).

On fol. 121ro-130vo, in a different hand to the preceding (and bound up with it later) is a text called Trithemius Redivivus, an English translation of a portion of Book i of the Steganographia, from which the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia derived its spirit names (while apparently missing the point of the book, which uses a variety of techniques to encode messages in what appear on the surface to be innocuous passages or strings of barbarous words).

The final article in Sloane 3824 (131r-154v) is a rearranged and heavily modified version of the Heptameron, "The Magick and Magicall Elements of  the Seven days of þe week, with their Appropriate hours, and the four Annual Seasons."  After the considerations and conjurations of the seven days, and various tables of names for the hours, days and seasons, follows an "Introduction," not found in the printed Heptameron, which I reproduce in full:

"An Introduction, teaching the use of the foregoing treatis of thereby other experiments or operations of the like nature orders or offices as a president refer'd to the spirits of the Ayr, being a sufficient exemplification for any Philosopher Skillfull in the Art of Magick, & well knowing how to make a trew & racionall distinction beetweene the Cœlestiall & blessed Angells, or intelligences, and the Cœlestially Dignified Elementall Angells, or Spirits of Light, & also of other Elementall powers, or Spirits, both of light & darkness; & so by nature and office, both good & Evill, together with others, called wandering spirits of the Aÿr, of the like nature & office, but of no orders, mansions, or proper place of Residence; but moving even like as flies in the son, without sensible Subjection to any superiour powers; together with Infernall powers, called spirits of Darkness, or Devils; who are saide by nature & office to be wholly evill, & therefore of themselves not to be invocated, moved, or called forth to visible Appearance; as the other Elementall powers, or spirits are; & may bee; but other spirits of their natures, orders, & offices may be them, & the power given to them (by Divine permission in the blessed Trinity) & in their names be moved & called forth to visible appearance, for such, or those purposes, which may, & usually (?) doth serve to the benifit of mankind; &c."

The instruction in forming the circle and preliminary rites from the Heptameron follows; the "ANCOR: ANACOR: AMIDES" prayer for robing is significantly extended and for the remainder of the work the text diverges significantly; the conjurations are padded out with additional verbiage while the general rubric is retained.  After the License to Depart follows a series of increasingly strongly worded "constraints" for uncoöperative Spirits, which with their rubric occupy the last four and a bit leaves of the MS., concluding with "the great Chaine or Sentence" in which the exorcist (having placed the spirit's name on a parchment, wrapped about with an iron wire, inside a metal box, on top of a charcoal brazier) declares:

"so behold (o you Spirit N:) we do powerfully hereby cast you forth into þe bottomless pit of unquenchable flames or other place of darkness, even the most terrable Tophet of endless & unspeakable torments, wherein you shall remaine bound, or Chained up, untill the dreadfull and great day of judgement, and there shall never be more remembrance of thee; before the face of God, who shall come to judge the quick & the dead, & the whorld by fire, as a due & just reward of this your disobedience, obstinacy & Rebellion, fiat, fiat, fiat."

The "BERALANENSIS: BALDACHIENSIS" conjuration (first conjuration in Ars Goëtia, conjuration to be said after the exorcism of the Aërial spirits and prayer to the quarters in the Heptameron), I've not found in 3824 yet, but it's entirely credible I missed it.

Of keys and gates (1)

The characterisation (e.g. in the BL catalogue) of the material on fol. 32-52 of Sloane MS. 3824 as "extracts from Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy" is not completely accurate and appears based on a careless reading of the scribal notes on fol. 30r & 31r combined with not checking against the passages that actually appear on the following pages.

Rather, it appears that the scribe (generally believed to be Elias Ashmole) had before him (a) the codex now known as BL Sloane MS. 3825, of which fol. 3-95 (current numbering) contain a treatise on angel-magic known as the Janua Magica Reserata (lit. "the Magical Gate Unlocked"), and (b) another codex containing the preliminary chapters of the Janua (up to the start of the "Isagogicall Observations" at fol. 40r) with ten substantial interpolations assigned to a "Dr. R."; and these interpolations are what follows.  The letters A to K in Sloane MS. 3825 are the insertion marks for these interpolated sections.

[I will post them when I've finished transcribing them, which may take a while.]

Identifying "Dr. R." with the "Dr. Rudd" from whose papers Harley MSS. 6479-6486 were said to have been copied (although the authority for this statement is a known liar and plagiarist) is made ever so slightly problematic by the fact that the "Dr. R." interpolations into the Janua that Ashmole copied do not, in fact appear, in "Dr. Rudd's" version of the Janua (Harley MS. 6482); in fact, none of preliminary theoretical part of the Janua (Sloane MS. 3825 fol. 2r-40r) was copied into Harley 6842; what parallels there are are consistent with independent derivation from the same (mostly printed) sources (e.g., there is some overlap between the two in the material drawn from Agrippa).

The cribs from "Dr. French his translation of Cornelius Agrippa his Occult Philosophy" spotted by Ashmole were in portions, though not the entirety, of the excerpts copied and the original text of the Janua.  A typeset of the Janua can be found in Skinner & Rankine's Keys to the Gateway of Magic. 

[I have to keep reminding myself, that as much as I keep facepalming at the editors' myth-making, shaky logic and presenting speculation as fact, it is unfair to critique that book for not being something it was never advertised as, and probably never intended to be: the important questions for the target audience are not "who wrote this and when?" "which bits of this text, if any, are original compositions, and which copied from printed books?" or even "what ideas influenced the author of this, and what was its subsequent influence?" so much as "can I usefully incorporate this material into my personal practice, and if so, how?"]

The Janua as a whole is much more deserving of the title A Treatise on Angel Magic than Harley 6482, which stripped out the material giving the theoretical basis for the whole thing & replaced it with a mishmash of excerpts.  EDIT: the preliminary sections of the Janua are themselves largely quoted and paraphrased from other works, but they have been edited and arranged to develop a theme and set the stage for the practical part, whereas the excerpts in Harley 6482 were probably copied into the notebook independently of, and prior to, the "Celestial Keys."

While I don't want to be too dogmatic on this point, the stylistic similarities and shared phrasing in the two works suggests that the Janua and "The Practice of the Tables" (i.e. the text on invocation of angels in Sloane MSS. 307 & 3821) were the work of the same author; indeed, the final set of conjurations in the latter work are titles Janua <direction> Reserata.

EDIT: dammit I fail Latin, Janua is fem. sing. not neut. pl.  Fixed.