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.

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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.

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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.

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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.