Lack of progress report 2022.02.24

Plodding on with redrawing the spirit seals from the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia, and while taking a break from that knocked up the above cover design as a pastiche of Crowley's Goetia cover.  Not totally happy with it: I wanted the background to be a gradiant fill rather than a flat grey, but the program I used to do the text layout has limited options for that, and attempting to export the page with such a background made a mess of it.

Current progress: all main text transcribed; seals redrawn for 17 of 31 principal spirits and 287 of 482 subordinates; introduction half-written; some appendices done, one (listing variants in the names from the different BL Lemegeton MSS.) part done, a couple more planned but not started (one of those will be the passages from the Ars Goëtia referenced in the text, another some diagrams from the Steganographia).

Of Keys and Gates (9)

Finished working over the Janua seals.  Decided to restore the Hebrew text that was omitted in the Sloane 3825 copy (the names of the Sephiroth & names of God corresponding, save for no. 2 which just had a single yod because there was no room for anything else in the centre of the pentagram at the size the thing was engraved -- less than 2cm across).

Some of the Latin mottos were abbreviated for space reasons in the printed Calendarium (the entire set of figures -- 20 circles all told -- were printed in a single row across the page, some 18" across including a column of text at left and right, and there was a limit to how much text even a legendary engraver like Matthäus Merian could physically fit in those designs).  The Sloane 3825 Janua, unsurprisingly, generally agrees with the print edition (some errors have been fixed and some introduced).

In the latest revision, full text has been restored for most, based on the images of the MS. posted at Twilight Grotto.

Some other minor alterations have been made for style & readability (e.g. having the things in the same typefaces I used in the main text).

The figure on the seal of Netzach was a heptagon in the printed Calendarium but turned into an octagon in the Sloane 3825 Janua, either in error or through laziness (constructing a regular heptagon by hand with compass and ruler is non-straightforward compared to drawing an octagon).  In the MS. one of the sides had a 7-pointed star instead.

The character for Geburah in the MS. is 9-angled; in this instance I went with the printed Calendarium.

I'm not sure I can face going over this lot again to make capitalisation consistent right now, though.

Variations in the names of the Angels from the printed Janua are retained: Großchedel used the Agrippa arrangement (the table does include, in its scale of No. 7, the characters of the Angels from the Heptameron, with Michael referred to Mercury, Anael to Sol and Raphael to Venus (the latter switch was an error by Merian, per Peterson -- see page already linked -- the MS. has them the other way round)).

I'm also not entirely sure what Großchedel's basis for assigning different geometric figures to the ten points of the scale was, in any case.  Only one matches the key scale number, and the circle for Sol and vesica / doubled crescent for Yesod / Luna are understandable.  The others, though, have no clear pattern.

Of Keys and Gates (8)

Well, was just chasing up something in connection with the figure of the "Magical Table of Solomon" in the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia, which, for reference (as redrawn by me from the Sloane 3824 copy) looks something like this:

As Joseph Peterson pointed out a long while ago, this design previously appeared in the Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum of Johann-Baptisa Grosschedel, a late-Renaissance emblem work printed in Frankfurt in 1618 by Johann Theodor de Bry from engravings by Matthäus Merian.  There, it appears thus:

The Calendarium includes tables based on, but expanded from, the tables of the scales of the numbers in book II of De Occulta Philosophia.  The "Table of Solomon" appears in the scale of the number 8, associated with the first letter heh in the divine name Yahweh va-Da'ath, the "poor in spirit [whose] is the Kingdom" among the "classes of the blessed" mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, Mars among the Planets and the "dryness of fire" among the Elements.  In a MS. of the Calendarium (BL Harley MS. 3420, dated 1614 and identified as the original author's holograph in a study by Carlos Gilly), it is further associated with "wisdom."

Anyway, looking further down the Calendarium, in the scale of the number 10 we find some familiar looking circular figures in pairs, labelled Sigilla decem nomina Dei principalia Complectentia, with geometric figures inside the circular borders and writing in Latin and Hebrew: in short, these are the same designs found in the Sloane MS. 3825 copy of the Janua Magica Reserata (the Janua including derivations from the Calendarium was also spotted by Peterson in 2004 or earlier).

Since the Calendarium itself is a synthesis including identifiable derivations from earlier works, of course (besides materials from Agrippa, the sigils of the planetary Angels from the Heptameron / Lucidarium, the seals of the Zodiac from the pseudo-Paracelsan Archidoxes Magica and the characters of the Olympic Planetary Spirits from Arbatel de magia veterum also appear), it is not necessarily either the origin of these particular designs, or the immediate source for the redactors of the Lemegeton or the Janua.  The seals of the Zodiac in the Ars Paulina, for example, agree much more closely with those printed in Robert Turner's translation of the Archidoxes than with those of the Calendarium.  However, where the Harley MS. versions of the seals from the scale of the number 10 differ significantly from the printed versions, Sloane 3825 agrees with the printed forms.  While Peterson identified some individual designs of similar general morphology to the "Tables of the Fathers" in 16th-century MSS. such as Wellcome MS. 110 and BL Additional MS 36674, earlier instances of the full scheme have not been turned up.

Anyway, off to fix the versions of the seals in my transcription of the Janua, and add one for the "tenth key."

[Images from the printed Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum from a copy in the Bibliothéque nationale de France, posted here.]

Lack of progress report 2022.02.15

Not entirely sure why I did this, but have made a start on a edition of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia of the Lemegeton, mainly drawing on Sloane 3825 but also incorporating additional material from "The Second Part of the Arte of King Solomon" in Sloane 3824, which AFAIK was passed over by previous typesets.  Of course, re-setting the text is the easy part of this: the tricky bit will be redrawing the 500+ spirit seals.  Six out of 31 of the larger & more elaborate ones, for the chief spirits, done so far, and 59 of the underlings.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (10)

So, I've finally decided to give the CP edition of the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia a bibliography (since that edition is in large measure being used as a vehicle for some of my researches / studies on the Lemegeton tradition and 17th-century English magick generally) & I'm also working over the breakdown of the other books of the Lemegeton.  In the process of doing so, noticed a few things:

1. Of the four parallel texts Mathers gives of the introductory breakdown of the compilation, none is identical, or even close, to the BL Lemegeton texts (Sloane MSS. 2731, 3648, 3825; Harley MS. 6483 lacks the short description of the five parts).  The fourth is probably from a Hockley copy: it omits all mention of the Ars Notoria, and the Wellcome 3203 and 4665 versions both agree with it in the omission of the words "of spirits" at the start of the description of the Ars Paulina; but the Sloane copies all contain the reference to "20 chief spirits" in the Ars Almadel, omitted in the first three of Mathers' parallel texts; nor does any contain the more elaborate account of the Ars Theurgia-Goetia that appears in Mathers' second column.

2. In addition to the "By the figurative mystery" prayer for robing, there's another close-to-verbatim parallel between the Lemegeton and "anti-Scot," the collection of magical processes interpolated at the start of book XV of the 1665 "Third Edition" of the Discovery of Witchcraft.  Towards the end of the Ars Paulina, the subject turns to the invocation of the personal "genius," apparently defined as the Angel governing the astrological sign and degree of the magician's birth, concluding with "an Exorcisme to call the genius into the christall stone": the example prayer given (it is specifically stated to be "set for an Example"), runs as followeth (Sloane MS. 3825 fol. 145r):

O thou great and blessed N. my angell guardian, vouchafe [sic] to descend from thy holy mansion that is celestiall with thy holy Influence and presence into this Cristal Stone, that I may behold thy glory, and enjoy thy Society, aide and assistance, both now and for ever hereafter, O thou who art higher than the fourth heaven and knoweth [sic] the secrets of Elanel, Thou that rideth upon the wings of the winds and art mighty and potent in thy celestial and superlunary motion, do thou descend and be present I pray thee, and I humbly desire and entreat thee That if ever I have merited thy society or if any of my actions and Intentions be real and pure & Sanctified before thee bring thy external presence hither, and converse with me one of thy submissive pupils, By and in the name of great god Jehovah, whereunto the whole quire of heaven singeth continually O Mappa La-man Hallelujah Amen.

Book XV, ch. 7 of the "third edition" of Scot is titled, "How to obtain the familiarity of the Genius or Good Angel, and cause him to appear."  The preliminary instructions and rubric are completely different: the magician is referred to "the Rules of Travius and Philermus" to find out the name of the personal daimon, as well as the appropriate "Character and Pentacle, or Lamin": while earlier in the chapter the magician is instructed to personally "compose an earnest Prayer unto the said Genius," which is to be repeated regularly for a week prior to the main invocation, for the ritual proper (likewise an invocation to crystal) the following form is prescribed:

O thou blessed Phanael my Angel Guardian, vouchsafe to descend with thy holy Influence and presence into this spotless Chrystal, that I may behold thy glory and enjoy thy society O thou who art higher than the fourth Heaven, and know'st the secrets of Elanel.  Thou that ridest upon the wings of the wind, and art mighty and potent in thy celestial and super-lunary motion, do thou descend and be present I pray thee, and desire thee, if ever I have merited thy society, or if my actions and intentions be pure and sanctified before thee, bring thy external presence hither, and converse with thy submissive pupil, by the tears of Saints  and Songs of Angels, in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, who are one God for ever and ever.

The citation "By the tears of Saints and Songs of Angels," while at least vaguely poetic, probably got redacted out in the Ars Paulina as smelling too strongly of Catholicism for the compiler of the Lemegeton.  The final citation in the Lemegeton version, as Skinner & Rankine observed in a note on a similar phrase being used in the Janua Magica Reserata, likely derives from a Dee-Kelly Spirit Action (T&FR p. 82).

3. The main conjuration of Part I of the Ars Paulina shares some phrasing with the "Invocation of Angels" texts, which of course could simply mean that that phrasing was a commonplace of English magical texts of the period: it doesn't share as much with them as they do with each other, and it doesn't have the same level of verbosity or legalism.

EDIT: the main conjuration of the Ars Almadel of the Lemegeton seems to have more phrasing shared specifically with the Janua.

4. Even if the prayer cited above derived independently from the same MS. tradition rather than being copied from anti-Scot, there are other considerations making it doubtful that the Ars Paulina of the Lemegeton significantly pre-dates 1665: it is possible, though this is currently speculation, that is was concocted at the time of the original compilation of the Lemegeton and the redaction of the first two books (the Ars Notoria of the Lemegeton definitely pre-dates the compilation: not having studied the Latin Almadel texts I'm not sure how heavily, or when, the Lemegeton version of that was worked over from the mediæval prototypes) prompted by Agrippa mentioning the "ars paulina" alongside the ars almadel and ars notoria in cap. 46 of De incertitudine et vantitate scientiarum (the work to which he was referring is a more heavily Christian derivative of the Ars notoria and has no connection beside the name with the third book of the Lemegeton).

EDIT: Joseph Peterson's account of the Ars Almadel indicates that the Lemegeton version has been drastically simplified from the Latin Almadel family, reducing twelve "Altitudes" to four, for example.  Further, the concluding lines of the main conjuration are simply repeated from that in Part i. of the Pauline Art of the Lemegeton.

5. Someone in the MS. transmission at a fairly early stage couldn't tell his 'R's from his 'L's: in three of the four BL texts the spirit is conjured by the "Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Region" (well, the copyist of Sloane 3648 eye-skipped from one "seat" to the next, giving (fol. 9r) "ministers of the Tartarean seat of Apologia in the 9th Region."  Waite (Book of Ceremonial Magic, p. 227) also has "region" and a bunch of other textual garbling in the first conjuration (e.g. "Baralamensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachie, Apoloresedes") although it is unclear if this was due to carelessness, an issue with his source MS., or deliberate--like Wier 400 years or more before, Waite admitted to tampering with the texts he printed in order to make them unusable.

6. The Pauline Art of the Lemegeton is not to be confused with "Paul 'n' Art," of whom it is sung, And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made.

Lack of progress report 2022.02.01

Current working on another "Meddling with the Goëtia again" post, & will soon(TM) upload another revision of the actual text, finally giving it a proper bibliography (checking the date-stamp on the file, it's now over 18 years old).

In the meantime I've uploaded the images of Sloane MSS. 3821, 3824 and 3677 that I've been using for the Longobardus and On the Invocation of Angels projects to Scribd (the copy of 3825 is on that site already, but these three are harder to find online and the copy that is doing the rounds has the three bundled into a single file with the pages out of order).