2021-11-30

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.

2021-11-25

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.

2021-11-05

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.