2021-05-11

No, the *other* Book 4 about Magick

De Occulta Philosophia, seu de Cæremoniis Magicis, Liber Quartus; cui accesserit Heptameron, seu Elementa Magica.

After much prevaricating, getting distracted, and fine-tuning of the balance of pedantry and sarcasm in the footnotes, the previously-threatened Latin text of the Fourth Book of pseudo-Agrippa and Heptameron seu Elementa Magica of pseudo-Abano, an important Renaissance work on ceremonial magic and possibly the first Grimoire to actually be printed (1559, if the date on the title page is to be believed), can now be read on Scribd.  While I did some cross-checking with the 1565 and 1567 printings (links are to copies on Google Books with everything that implies) and the texts included in various of the "per Beringos Fratres" printings of tom. i of Agrippa's Opera, this makes no pretence at being a critical text.  

I have inserted things like paragraph breaks and section headings into pseudo-Agrippa's walls of text,  rearranged some of the lists of names in the Heptameron into tables for ease of reference, identified (most of) the chapters of De Occulta Philosophia libri tres cited, added a bibliography as well as an overview of the "supplements to Agrippa," the collection of texts on magic, divination & the like that were bound up with various posthumous printings of De Occulta Philosophia.

What I have not (yet) done, is indicated quite how extensive the borrowings in the Heptameron from the Liber Iuratus Honorii (Sworn Book of Honorius) are, largely due to my lack of familiarity with the latter work.  While BL Royal MS. 17 A XLII (not 15th century despite what the BL catalogue claims, as it has multiple identifiable cribs from De Occulta Philosphia) almost certainly took the seals of the planetary Angels from the Heptameron, or possibly a Lucidarium MS. -- the sigils being AWOL in the earlier surviving Liber Iuratus MSS. (similarly for the names associated with the 4 seasons at fol. 72ro sqq.) -- the remaining parallels go way beyond the lists of names in the second part of the Heptameron.  In particular, a large chunk of the ritual procedure beginning with the "Prayer to God, to be said in the four quarters of the world, in the circle" through to the charge to the spirits, appears to have been taken, with variations and expansions on some points, verbatim on others, from cap. CXXXIII of the Liber Iuratus (see for example Joseph Peterson's online edition of the text, and apparatus ad loc.).

The strange phrase, on which I have previously remarked, "Bathat vel Vachat super Abrac ruens, supervivens [v.l. "superiruens," "superveniens"] Abeor super Aberer" appears in the equivalent passage of Liber Iuratus as "Bachac super Abrac ruens, Abeor super Aberor" (apud Hedegård; Peterson, apparently working from the same MS., has "Bathac" in his online text).

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