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.

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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:

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* * *

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.

Featuring Ave from the "Dr. Dee and some Spirits" series, and Knuckles.

[The following is transcribed from BL Sloane MS. 3677 fol. 180r-181v; it is the last of a number of short texts appended to Elias Ashmole's copy of John Dee's Liber Mysteriorum I-V spirit diaries (Sloane MS. 3188).  The handwriting does not appear to be Ashmole's and the provenance is unclear; it is presented as another, little-known, example of how material from A True and Faithful Relation was used by seventeenth-century English magicians.  I have retained the original spelling and punctuation, but have expanded a few scribal abbreviations.]

[180r] WHEREAS we are certainly and credibly informed that James Knuckles being prisoner, in the County of Middlesex about four yeares agoe, between the houres of Twelve and One of the clock in the night, there appeared a Phantasme unto him by his bed side he being then awake and called him by his name Knuckles, Knuckles, Knuckles three times distinctly his face being towards the wall and the said Apparition at his back, who having himself called by his name turned about towards the said Apparition, and there beheld one in black as in a Priests garment, at which the said mr Knuckles being sore affrighted issued out these words, (vizt) In the name of the ffather, Son, and holy Ghost, what art thou, I am sure thou art no mortall creature, The answer by the said Apparition replyed was as followeth; No more I am not, but I have brought you good news, with that the said Mr Knuckles made answer, what news; then the said Apparition answered, Goo you to a place called Edmunton,[1] and hard by the Churchyard in an Orchard under an Ashen Tree do you dig seven foot deep, & there are twelve Leaden pots every Pot being a foot square, whereof eleaven of the said pots are full of Gold and the Twelfth pot is richer than all the rest, with that the said party James Knuckles replyed who is this Gold for, with which he answered it is for your selfe, and none else.  Be sure you goe, with that he vanished away.

About three months afterwards the said party went to dig under an Ashen Tree as before directed by the Spirit, with other company, and they digged two foot, and found the ground never before opened, at the which they left of digging there, and went to another Ashen Tree in the said Orchard, and they had not laboured above half an hour, but the same Apparition, as he supposed, appeared unto all the Company on the other side of the hedge and spake as followeth to some of the company who were Quakers, what is the matter with these Quakers, that I cannot take my rest, you dig for Treasure, and there is none belongs to you, therefore I wish you to begone, at the which one of the Quakers spake to the said Mr Knuckles and called him by his name: James I see that thou speakest truth, for here is the said Apparition thou touldst us of which thou saidst, should meet us here, (for it seemes the said James Knuckles did believe such a thing before) but no sooner were the words spoken but the Apparition vanished, and then happened such a tempest or Hurricane, that the man of the house came to them and desired them to begone, for he said that they had raised the Devill, and wished them to begone, otherwise he would raise the whole Town upon them, at the which they desisted for that time, and the said party James Knuckles was going homewards, was blown of a Cawsey into a certain Ditch up to his Waste, and the rest of the company dispersed, where he knew nothing of them, untill such time as he came to Newington, about three or four miles distant, where they met together.

Whereas likewise we have credible Information by Richard Brickenden, that at a certain place in Berkshire called Inkipen,[2] at the personage yard there lyes hidden the summe of One Thousand pounds of Barbary Gold in an Iron pot, covered with a Tyle, we would know the certainty & truth thereof, that we may enjoy there same and convert it to our necessary uses. [180v]

And whereas it is very well known and by true and certain experience found that many Treasures and Treasuries preordained and appointed through divine grace by the power and efficacy of Celestial and Superiour Influences, acting or opperating properly as Agents on all Terrestriall objects, thereby generating and produceing those many Specy first formes & Ideas now growing in the bowells of the Earth, as are by nature and time perfected & brought forth,  answerable to Celestiall Influence and opperation for the use and benefit of mankind but onely as aforesaid, and as here it is properly meant & soe accordingly to be understood of all such of those Treasures or Treasuries of Gold & Silver whither in Coyn, Plates, Jewells, Bulloin or otherwise, that hath been manufacturized heretofore and in common use amongst the Sons of Men then living on Earth, and as aforesaid buried in the Earth, or otherwise hidden in some very secret places and at this day continuing in Sundry and severall places of the Earth or otherwise to hide or lay up in secret places their Treasures and Treasuries of Gold and Silver and other good or chattells of considerable value, from the Knowledge benefit and comfort of mankind or Successive generations in after ages, for whose benefit use & comfort the same was of the most high God principally ordained & through his divine grace and goodess given accordingly for use by hand of nature and soe from time to time untill this day, It hath been accustomary and common for many people of most Countrys in the World for several reasons induceing them so to doo, either indirectly through Coveteousness or  envy or other wicked machinations which is pursued and assigned by divine Justice.  Or directly though forcible or fatal necessity constraining thereunto in hopes of a future preservation, which people then dying or departing this life without revealing or discovering such Treasures or Treasuries by them so buried or otherwayes hidden, to any person then living, then do the Spirits of darkness called Evill or Infernall powers as the ministers of divine Justice take into possession and keep all such Treasures as hath been both indirectly gotten and enviously hidden untill such divine judgments are expiated.  

And the servants of God the sons of men, shall as by right of inheritance or by art and industry seeke after and discover & obtain the same, and soe likewise of all such Treasures or Treasuries that hath been directly gotten and of necessity hidden, and by the decease of its proper owners left undiscovered & soe at length become wholly unknown; Then doth either some Ayeriall or Terrestriall or otherwise Elementall Spirits by nature as well of Light as darkness and more benevolent then the former and also more willing to serve and assist the Sons of Man servants of God according to their several and respective orderes and offices being moved thereunto.  Then (wee say) doth some one or other or more of those kind of Spirits as they behold Range and visit all parts and places of the Earth, take possession and keep such Treasures or Treasuries from the knowledge use and benefit of mankind, and from their [181r] easy discovering and obtaining of the same, untill by Art or Industry they are commanded or constrained to reveal, yield up, and deliver the same unto whomsoever shall by the power of Art or other divine dignification accordingly move, and compell them so to doo; and like-wise for all other such Treasures or Treasuries of Gold and Silver which in any wise lyeth buried or secretly hidden in any place of the Earth; And that are possessed and kept of Spirits either by chains or purpose or appointment, and so to be discovered & obtained by Art and Industry as aforesaid: All which wee certainly know and verily believe to be rational and truth, not onely by many credible reports and informations given thereof, but by the absolute experience had in þe common use and practise now becomein all reports accustomary amongst the people from time of old until this say.

Now then soe it is, that wee hereby confidently and humbly beseech you, that some spirit or spirits may be assigned and given to us, to appear visibly unto us in fair & decent forme, either in a Glass Receptacle as being one usuall forme and manner of appearance in receiving or inclosing of Spirits or otherwise before us out of the same, accordingly as þe best convenience and benefit of our opperations shall necessarily require whensoever and wheresover wee shall move and call them forth to visible appearance, And that by the force & power of our Invocations and Constringations, such as those Spirit or Spirits of what name, nature, order office or degree soever assigned or given to us, may as familiar Spirits & obedient servants, readily willingly and faithfully serve us and assist us accordingly therein, And also to reveal, discover and make known and shew forth unto us the very truth and certainty of all such places or any particular place by name respectively, or possitively as that of the aforesaid James Knuckles, Richard Brickenden &c., where any Treasure or Treasuries of Gold and Silver, where in Coyn, plate, jewells or Bullions or other goods or Chattells doth lye buried in the Earth or otherwise hidden in any secret place in any Country of the Earth that hath been heretofore manufacturized & in use amongst men, And most especially and in particular in this Realm Kingdom or Country of England soe called, and what Spirit or Spirits by name order or office doth possess or keep such Treasures or Treasuries of Gold and Silver either by chance, purpose or appointment from the knowledge, necessary benefit and use of mankind; That soe either by the help and assistance of such familiar spirit or Spirits Servant or Servants assigned given or bound unto us, and to attend our motions & Calls, or by þe force vertue & efficacy of our Invocations and Constringations, any Spirit or Spirits of what order degree or nature or for what cause soever that shall possess or keep any Treasures or Treasuries of God and Silver buried hidden or layd up in any ground, house, vault, cellar, or any other place or places in any County, Citty, Town, Castle or old ruined places or in what other place or places soever within this Realm or Kingdom of England soe called, may bring or cause to be brought away, all or any of the aforesaid Treasure or Treasuries possessed and kept by any order whatsoever, Directly and Immediately unto this or any other appointed place, then and there and at that very instant or moment of time to leave [181v] the same, barely nakedly and openly visible to þe sight of our eyes and then to be discharged, and soe from thence to be dismissed and to depart unto their orders without dareing or presumeing to returne thereto again, or seemingly to alter change or convert the same into any vile or base matter contrary to þe forme of its natural Specie or otherwise what it truly was when it was first buried hidden or layd up, whereby to deceive defraud or deprive us thereof; now therefore O most Royall and mighty King Bataiva King of the East, and Raagios King of the West, Iczodhehca King of the South & Edelperna King of the North, Wee Invocate earnestly request and undeniably move you to compell and to force the Six Seniors of the East, the Six Seniors of the West, the Six Seniors of the South and the Six Seniors of the North, with all other servient and subservient & benevolent Angells under them, to move and visibly appeare and faithfully to answer to our Calls they being composed according to the Instructions of þe Angell Ave [3] all belonging to their respective Angles and places, and by the threefold mighty names of God Oro Ibah Aozpi in þe East, Empeh Arsel Gaiol over the West Emor Dial Hectaga [4] over the South and Oip Teaa Pedoce over the North, wee doe humbly beseech by the power of all aforesaid and for the Love thou bearest to mankind cause & compell all orders whatsoever whither Celestiall Elementall or Infernall or of what order or office soever they appertain or belong to answer to our Calls & Invocations and faithfully to performe serve and accomplish to the true obtaining all within mentioned and whatsoever else wee shall earnestly request and command, wee being according to the express Image of thy Selfe.

[1] Edmonton, now part of the London borough of Enfield: formally became part of Greater London in 1965.  There was a notorious witch-trial there in 1621 leading to the execution of one Elizabeth Sawyer; the case was used as the base for a popular play, The Witch of Edmonton, written and performed the same year.

[2] Now Inkpen; southeast of Hungerford, near the border with Wiltshire and Hampshire.

[3] Which part of "A short and brief speech" (Ave, Action of 1584.07.02, TFR p. 188) do you not understand?

[4] Obverse that MOR is here referred to the South and OIP to the North, as in the Dee MSS., rather than the other way round as in Sloane MS. 307 and the Golden Dawn.

* * *

Much of the phrasing in the above also appears in two treasure-hunting "experiments" in Sloane 3824 (typeset in Rankine, Book of Treasure Spirits): these, rather than the Kings and Seniors of the Table of Earth, call on a series of spirits, some of whose names are familiar from Liber Officiorum versions.

[EDIT: fixed some errors due to my not understanding a scribal abbreviation.]