2021-04-14

Meddling with the Goëtia again (2)

OK, this gets murkier.  For years I had glibly asserted that the conjurations in the Goëtia derived from Robert Turner's translation of the Heptameron that was bound up with the Fourth Book of pseudo-Agrippa.

On examining a facsimile of the 1655 edition posted at the Internet archive, it turns out that Turner didn't translate the conjurations at all, but (with the exception of the "Prayer to God, to be said in the four parts of the World, in the Circle") left them in the original Latin.  The translated conjurations do appear in a reprint of the Turner translation, "with great Improvements" issued without publisher, place, or editor's name, dated 1783 on the title page.  This of course significantly post-dates the Lemegeton MSS.; it now seems more likely that the compiler of the Goëtia did their own translations from pseudo-Abano (the additional sections from the Heptameron interpolated into the variant Goëtia in Harley MS. 6483, the "Dr. Rudd" Lemegeton, are verbatim with Turner, barring some minor variations in spelling).

EDIT: dammit my head hurts now.  Skinner apparently used an earlier and less complete printing of Turner's translation as the basis for the facsimile (Askin, 1978).  The translated conjurations do appear in another edition, dated 1665 (neither this nor the 1783 edition are mentioned in the chapter on Robert Turner in Elizabethan Magic by Robert Turner et al., which incorrectly describes the Askin facsimile as the "second edition").

The 1783 edition was the source for Barrett's The Magus: in the conjuration of Wednesday, Animalium in the Latin was misprinted as Ammalium, leading to et per nomen sedis Animalium, habentium senas alas being translated by the nonsensical "and by the name and place of Ammalium," which reading was then further corrupted by Barrett to "and by the name and place of Ammaluim" (I erroneously stated in an edition of the Heptameron I issued many years ago and which still lingers on in the dark corners of the Internet that the garbling was due to Turner or Barrett; in fact Turner (1665) translated it correctly).  Steven Skinner's 2005 re-set of Turner reverted "Ammalium" to "Animalium" but kept the rest of the citation.  "Animals having six wings" is probably a reference to the Apocalypse.

However, my characterisation of passages as being "identically or near-identically worded" to the Turner translation was based on the Mathers-Crowley edit, and not on any BL MSS., and Mathers took liberties with his texts that went beyond modernising English spelling and attempting to revert corruptions in Divine Names of Hebrew origin.

For example: in the Second Conjuration, after the reference to Moses calling on the name ADONAI to summon a plague of locusts, in the Mathers edition there follows: "and by the name SCHEMA AMATHIA which Ioshua called upon, and the sun stayed his course."

In the Exorcism of the Aërial Spirits in the Heptameron of pseudo-Abano, some texts (not the "Marburg, 1559" printing or the edition of Agrippa's Opera used as the basis for the 1970 Georg Olms facsimile, but it is in at least three of the other "per Beringos fratres" editions of Agrippa including that used by Turner), the reference to the plague of locusts is followed by et per nomen Schemes amathia, quod Iosua vocavit, et remoratus est Sol cursum.  Turner translated this: "and by the name Schemes amathia, which Joshua called upon, and the Sun stayed his course."

In the four BL Lemegeton MSS. (Sloane MSS. 2731, 3648, 3825, Harley MS. 6483) the citation appears slightly earlier, after the reference to Aaron becoming wise after hearing and speaking the name Anepheneton (or Anaphexaton, Anephexeton, &c.), and is worded (with minor variations in spelling): "and by the name Schemes-Amathia which Joshua called upon and the Sun stood still."

Conclusion: Mathers used the Turner Heptameron in the process of editing the Goëtia.  How heavily the original redactor did is less clear.

There is one noticeable variation in wording between Turner and Mathers & Crowley: in the three references in the second conjuration to Moses calling plagues on Egypt, Mathers or Crowley deleted specific references to, well, Egypt:

Compare:

Sloane MS. 3825: "And by the name Zebaoth, which Moses named, & all the Rivers and waters in the land of Ægypt were turned into blood; and by the name Escerchie Oriston, which Moses named, and the rivers brought forth froggs, they went into the houses of the Egyptians, Distroying all things [...] and by the name Adonay, which Moses named, & there came up locusts throughout all the land of Egypt and devoured all that the Haill at [sic] left"

Turner: "And by the name Zebaoth, which Moses named, and all the Rivers and waters in the land of Egypt were turned into blood; and by the name Ecerchie Oriston, which Moses named, and all the Rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the houses of the Egyptians, destroying all things [...] and by the name Adonay, which Moses named, and there came up Locusts, which appeared upon the whole land of Egypt, and devoured all which the Hail had left"

Mathers & Crowley: "And by the name ZABAOTH, which Moses named and all the rivers were turned into blood; and by the name ASHER EHYEH ORISTON, which Moses named, and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the houses, destroying all things [...] and by the name ADONAI, which Moses named, and there came up locusts, which appeared upon the whole land, and devoured all which the hail had left."

And let's not get started on how entire heresies and schisms can arise from scribes neglecting to dot 'i' s or cross 't's.  It's quite clearly "seal [or 'seale'] of Adonay" in three of the four BL Lemegeton MSS., Sloane 2731 (at least in the badly digitised microfilm I'm using) is ambiguous, it could be a 't' or 'l' but it's not clearly crossed and differs from the scribe's other terminal 't's; but the corresponding citation in the Heptameron is sedem Adonay.  Turner's translation, as printed, has "seal" although the Latin is given correctly.  Suggestion: either Turner (assuming he was responsible for the additional translations in the 1665 printing, which is possible but by no means certain; Robin E. Cousins in the account of his works in Robert Turner's Elizabethan Magic suggests he died during the plague that year) neglected to cross the 't' in 'seat' or the typesetter misread his handwriting, and the error was perpetuated into the Lemegeton.

And so I come back to the stance I was on the point of recanting at the start of this post: the Goëtia (as distinguished from Book of the Offices of the Spirits) depends on and thus post-dates, not merely the Heptameron (a prototype of which under a different name but with the same pseudoepigraphal author credit apparently existed half a century or more prior to the Fourth Book), but a specific printing of a specific English translation of the Heptameron.

EDITED AGAIN: Blech, I can't read.  The second printing of Turner's translation was dated 1665, not 1655.  The above has been corrected accordingly.

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