Here we go again . . .

Don't know when this happened, but I just discovered that the Theurgia-Goetia, On the Invocation of Angels and Longobardus have been pulled by Scribd "at the request of the rightsholder(s)."  Since these are typesets and do not directly reproduce images of the MSS. on which they were based, I doubt the "rightsholder(s)" in question were the British Library.  Probably some copyright troll.

I thought I'd seen the last of this crap years ago.  I've mailed Scribd's copyright line contesting the removal.  In the meantime, it turns out On the Invocation of Angels has been uploaded to the Internet Archive, and Theurgia-Goëtia can be found on the "PDFCoffee" site (this latter site is an abomination, but not a complete scam: the file can be downloaded, though the web-viewer refuses to display it).  The only copy of Longobardus I found online was on a semi-private forum and doesn't appear to be viewable or downloadable by non forum members.

Lack of progress report 2025.09.23

Some heavy "citation needed" here, but the characterisation by Skinner & Rankine (I don't remember where exactly) of the "Invocation of Angels" texts (Janua Magica Reserata, Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, &c.) as "aristocratic angel magic" is frankly bizarre.

Labelling them thus appears to derive from the belief that (a) John Sommers collected MS. works on magical subjects specifically in order to practice them (rather than for antiquarian interest, or, as Han Sloane did, to debunk them and study the subject as a department of psychopathology), and (b) of all the materials Sommers collected, and which later passed to his brother-in-law and protégé Joseph Jekyll (including the MSS. now designated BL Additional 36674 and Sloane 3677-79, 3821-22, 3824-26, 3846-57 & 3883-85: encompassing versions of the Clavicula Salomonis and Lemegeton, the Picatrix and other works on astrological image magic, English translations of the Heptameron, De occulta philosophia liber quartus and Arbatel de magia veterum, the Liber Iuratus, &c. &c. &c.), his primary interest was in the ceremonial crystallomancy of the Janua and the texts making up the bulk of what is now Sloane 3821.

I would submit that these latter are rather magic--not necessarily for the masses, but at least for the middle classes.  Full-dress Solomonic ritual with its magic circles, elaborate preliminary ceremonial, and a wheelbarrow full of Instruments of Art, requires a great deal of private space, leisure time, and resources.  The processes of the Picatrix require sourcing obscure and frequently dangerous materia, and complex astrological calculations.  "Invocation of Angels" rituals can be done with a small private room, a table of practice, the "crystal stone or glass receptacle" and its stand, two or three people (skryer / invocant / scribe) and a few hours per session.  The one person at the time for whom there is better than circumstantial evidence of actually practicing this stuff, Thomas Britton, was a charcoal merchant.  There's no indication that the group that created Sloane 3624-28, a group of angel-magic journals, the last volume of which includes the Celestial Keys of the Janua were members of the aristocracy.

Meddling with the Goetia again (13)

So, this came out of a discussion on r/occult not long ago, sparked by someone asking why no works on magic refer to any angels as "Duchesses" (possibly because (a) the view expressed by Trithemius in Liber Octo Questionum that good angels never appear in female form was widely held, or (b) there was an established system of Angelic Hierarchies from the works of pseudo-Dionysius, so no impulse to apply European feudal titles to them like there was with demons).  

Anyway, one of the commenters on that thread drew my attention to the Pauline Art of the Lemegeton depending, not merely on Jean Belot's Oeuvre des Oeuvres, but more specifically on the 1671 second edition of Physiognomie, and chiromancie, metoposcopie, &c. &c. &c. of Richard Saunders, large chunks of which are barely-credited English translations from Belot's works.  Specifically, the table of Hebrew letters, which forms the basis for the names of the angels of the degrees of the Zodiac in the second part of the Ars Paulina, varies due to printing errors over the various editions of Belot's works, and was further changed by Saunders, and according to Alan Thorogood in the Teitan edition of the Pauline Art of Solomon, the names in the Lemegeton are more consistent with Saunders than any editions of Belot.

If this was indeed the source, this would push the earliest possible date for the Lemegeton existing as a compilation to six years later than the date I claimed in my notes on the Goëtia.

On the other hand, with a closer look at the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia, I have to concede that the work, or at least its scheme of spirits and aspects of its praxis, existed in some form prior to its being incorporated into the Lemegeton.  In Sloane MS. 3824, fol. 53-71, is found "The Second Parte of the Art of King Solomon," an incomplete copy by Elias Ashmole of a magical work with the same scheme of spirits as the Theurgia-Goëtia, and the same rubric of conjuration with the "Table of Solomon."  This copy omits the lists of "Dukes" under each chief spirit, as well as practically all the spirit seals (the text indicates they were in Ashmole's source but not copied), and cuts off in the entry for Cabarial.

Crucially, "The Second Parte" omits the references back to the Ars Goëtia found in the Lemegeton text: the passing reference to the "garments and other materiall things" at the end of the introduction, and the instruction to "make a circle in the forme as is shewed in the book Goetia" in the rubric of conjuration that follows the description of Pamerisel.  The latter instruction, indeed, is also omitted in Sloane 3825, and also makes little sense in the texts in which it does appear, as read literally the text implies that you make the circle then go and do the ritual somewhere else with a crystal set on the table of practice.  Further, it has a completely different form of conjuration, repeated at length for each chief spirit.  This conjuration does not have the blatant dependence on the Turner Heptameron found in the Goëtia ("by the name PrimaUmaton, who commendeth the whole Host of Heaven" parallels an expression in the "Exorcism" but is differently worded to Turner's rendition).  Some expressions suggest the English of Dee's Claves Angelicae ("come away"; "move, descend & appear"; "him that liveth for ever") but, compared to the borrowings in the "Invocation of Angels" texts these are short and inconclusive.

(I will also remark, that while the rubric of conjuration in the Sloane 3824 text makes no mention of a circle and refers only to a "Christall Stone or Glass Receptacles" set on the "Table of Art," the conjurations generally call on the spirit to appear "here before this circle."  Amenadiel and Padiel are called to appear "before this Christall" at one point in their conjuration and "before the Circle" later in the same text.  I am inclined to regard those two instances of "Christall" as a slip; other conjurations of the period based around evocation to crystal tend to call on the spirit to appear in the crystal or glass rather than before it.)

Since the latter half of "The Second Parte" was not copied into Ashmole's "Longobardus" notebook, and no other copy is known, it is unclear if there is anything at the end of the spirit catalogue, where the third reference to the Goëtia in the Theurgia-Goëtia is found (for the procedure to be followed once a spirit actually turns up).

It is thus doubtful that the "First Parte" implied by the title is, in fact, the Ars Goëtia; it was likely some other Solomonic text, perhaps even pre-existing and completely unrelated (e.g. a Clavicula Salomonis version) but which the writer of the "Second Parte" wanted to ride off the success of.

(I also note with amusement that the Google "AI Summary" if you search for "Second Part of the Art of King Solomon" claims that the title refers to the Ars Goëtia.)

Meddling with the Goëtia again (12)

Given it's been a year and a half since the last update, I'm not sure anyone's still reading this, but going over my notes on the Goëtia again, it occurred to me to check something, which has tended to reinforce my suspicions that the redactor of the Lemegeton used the 1665 "third edition" of Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft.

A brief reminder: the 1665 "third edition" interpolated nine additional chapters of magical processes at the start of Book XV, two others of which contain passages (the prayer for robing in ch. v and the prayer to the Guardian Angel in ch. vii) that are very close (word-for-word identical in places) with ritual speeches in the Lemegeton.  The last of these is titled, "How to Conjure the Spirit Balkin the Master of Luridan" (Luridan being the subject of process which occupied ch. viii).  The spirit is conjured, amongst other things, by "the mighty Prince Coronzon," whose name is also to be written upon a girdle worn by the magician.

Anyway, at the end of the procedure, as is customary, Balkin is licensed to depart, thusly:

Because thou hast diligently answered my demands, and been ready to come at my first call, I do here licence thee to depart unto thy proper place, without injury or danger to man or Beast; depart, I say, and be ever ready at my call, being duly exorcized and conjured by sacred Rites of Magick; I charge thee to withdraw with quiet and peace; and peace be continued betwixt me and thee, in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Compare the Ars Goëtia (Sloane MS. 3825, fol. 116r):

O thou spirit N Because thou hast very dilligently answered my demands and was ready and willing to come at my first call I doe hear Licence thee to depart unto thy proper place without doeing any Injury or danger to any man or beast depart I say and be ever reddy to come at my call being duly exorcised and conjured by the sacred rites of magick, I charge thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and the peace of god be ever continued between me and thee, Amen.

Mathers rendered it thusly:

O Thou Spirit N., because thou hast diligently answered unto my demands, and hast been very ready and willing to come at my call, I do here licence thee to depart unto thy proper place; without causing harm or danger unto man or beast.  Depart, them I say, and be thou very ready to come at my call, being duly exorcised and conjured by the sacred rites of magic.  I charge thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and the peace of GOD be ever continued between thee and me!  AMEN!

For comparison purposes, the license to depart in the Heptameron (the source for much of the verbiage in the conjurations of the Ars Goëtia) runs:

In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, ite in pace ad loca vestra: et pax fit inter nos et vos, parati sitis venire vocati.

which Turner translated thus: 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost, go in peace unto your places & peace be between us and you, be ye ready to come when ye are called.

The English Key of Solomon version in Sloane 3645 (fol. 6r) simply instructs the magician, "thou wilt command every one to returne peaceably into his place and say, Peace bee betweene you and mee.  After this let the Conjurer say St. John's Ghospell and the 12 Articles of the Creedo, and goe out of the Circle."

The Key of Solomon version (late 16th-century) in Sloane 3847 (fol. 22v) has: "Let every one of you turne into his place peaceably, and peace be between us and you," followed by a similar instruction to to repeat "St. John's Gospell, In principio erat &c. credo in deum."

There are minor differences in phrasing between the Goëtia and Discovery texts, but much is word-for-word identical and we have seen a similar thing with the material adapted from Turner's translation of the Heptameron.  It does of course remain possible that the compiler of the Lemegeton derived all three of those passages from the same manuscript or MS. tradition used by the editor of the 1665 Discovery rather from the printed text, but the dependence on Scot in other respects (i.e., the catalogue of spirits), and the fact that other considerations make 1665 the earliest possible date for the redaction of the Lemegeton, tend to make use of the 1665 Discovery the simplest explanation.

Lack of progress report 2022.08.01

Latest version of Longobardus (Sloane MS. 3824) is now on Scribd.  This now includes all the text sections but still omits the second collection of talismanic figures as well as the page of circular designs with planetary characters in the middle of "Magical Elements."  It also now has a bibliography.  A bunch of notes on the various names of spirits cited therein (mainly regarding their occurrences in English magical works of the period & century or two preceding) is still under construction.  

Also, after uploading it I managed to track down a source for the first of the "Dr. R" interpolations into the Janua Magica Reserata: Excerpt "A" is taken, with minor paraphrasing and verbal alterations, from the 1633 third edition of The Philosophers Banquet (first pub. 1609 as The Philsophers Banquet: furnished with few dishes for health, but large discourse for pleasure &c. &c. &c., in turn represented as an English translation of the Mensa Philsophica of "Theobaldus Anguilbertus" (Michael Scot, fl. early 13th cent. c.e.)).  The third "book" of this work is a miscellany of material for "after-dinner conversation," wandering over various topics.  That particular passage wasn't in the 1614 second edition (I couldn't find a copy of the first edition online) and was probably added by the "translator," known only as "W. B., Esquire."

Lack of progress report 2022.07.27

Well, have Internet back since last week (kinda-sorta had it before then but the idea of updating this blog on a touch-screen phone isn't all that appealing) although my situation is still somewhat precarious & I'm now in a different city -- hopefully fairly short-term, so won't be changing the imprint just yet.  Been pretty slack the past month (& also tired most of the time owing to only drinking a fraction of the amount of coffee I used to).  

Anyway, after another extended period of slacking and minor tinkering with various documents, made another start at Longobardus (Sloane 3824), largely this meant giving it some semblance of a proper bibliography.  Maybe I'll read Religion and the Decline of Magic next & see if it contains any clues to the social / religious background that produced the "Invocation of Angels" texts.

Lack of progress report 2022.06.30

This will likely be the last update for a while as I have to be out of the place where I'm currently set up today, and do not currently have anywhere long, or even medium, term to relocate to: so rectifying that is going to be something of a priority.

Recently put out an update to On the Invocation of Angels; this is mostly relatively minor tweaks / fixes, though: added the invocation of "L.B.S." from Longobardus to the appendix to "Operations of the Angles of the Air" but the rest is just updated notes / bibliography.  The work still needs a general introduction even if that does end up snowballing into an MA thesis (I can dream...).

My head hurts.

So, I've been going over the Longobardus and Invocation of Angels texts, mainly in preparation for the next updated release of the latter, and decided to run a more detailed comparison of the Sloane 3821 text of "A Select Treatise" with the fragment in Sloane 3825.  So here's the thing:

* The opening of the conjuration of Agiel in 3825 (fol. 99r, v) is with one or two exceptions (e.g. it has "art" for "are" at one point) word for word (i.e., differing on spelling, capitalisation and punctuation) identical to that in 3821.

* The fragment in 3824 (fol. 37r), which was part of the above (handwriting is the same and the page numbering and text continues directly from where the 3825 copy breaks off) until Ashmole detached the sheet on which it was written from the rest of that book and appended it to his "Longobardus" notebook, deviates significantly from the 3821 text before trailing off.

3824: "[…] same to transmit your true & reall presence, Corporally, in your Appearances plainly & Visibly, to the Sight of our Eyes, & Voyces to our Ears, that We may also as plainly & Visible see you & Audibly here you, speake unto us: or otherwise to Appear out of the same Visibly here before us, as it shall please God & you his Servants, or Servants as Messagers of his paterniall grace, & mercy, Seemeth Most Meet, proper, pertinent, or best befitting this action, Appearance, Occasion or Matters &c."

3821: "[…] same to transmit youre true and reale preasance In splended Appearance plainely unto the sight of our Eyes uter your voyces unto our Eares that we may not only visible see you but audibly heare you speake unto us and that we may Convers with you or otherwise forthwith Appeare out of them visibly upon this Table or ffairely upon the flore and shew plainely & visibly unto us A Suffitient signe or teste of youre Coming and Appearance" [&c. &c. &c.]

This almost suggests that the introduction, description of Agiel and the opening of the conjuration was written by one writer: that either the original writer left it unfinished, or whoever was copying it after the 3825 Janua gave up a short way into the conjuration of Agiel, and that the work was subsequently completed by someone else based on that copy after Ashmole detached one sheet.

This is it, which the Angels won't give you a Google Maps link for

In addition to the scheme of the angels and divine names of the four Watchtowers, Dee's "Table of the Earth" contains another set of names, read not on horizontal or vertical straight lines (well, one of them is) but according to a set of angular sigils or Characteres Symmetrici.  These are tabulated in Dee's Liber Scientiæ, Auxillii et Victoriæ Terrestris (book of earthly knowledge, aid and victory), in Sloane MS. 3191 fol. 14r-31r, with the arrangement of characters on the table appearing on 55v-56r.

The seven-letter names thus read are variously characterised as being the names of "Ninety-one Princes and spiritual Governers, to whom the earth is delivered as a portion" (T&FR, p. 139) or "names of the parts of the earth, divinely imposed" (Partium Terræ Nomina, Divinitus imposita) as contrasted with "names of the parts of the earth, imposed by men" (Partium Terræ Nomina, ab Hominibus imposita) (column headings in Liber Scientiæ).  These 91 names are split up into 30 Bonorum Principum Aëreorum Ordines Sphærici with 3-letter names such as LIL, ARN, ZOM, &c.

In Dee's 48 Claves Angelicæ MS. (Sloane 3191, fol. 12ro), immediately prior to the "Key of the 30 Ayres" for invoking these orders, is a diagram showing the orders of "Aërial Princes" as concentric circles with TEX, the 30th, as the innermost and LIL, the first as the outermost, each divided into 3 (or four for TEX) corresponding to the parts of the earth comprehended therein.  This seems to have suggested to some later commentators that the Ayres are something like the Aeons or layers of Heaven of certain Gnostic traditions, which eventually was elaborated into a conception of the scheme (on which, for example Crowley's entire "The Vision and the Voice" working was founded) that managed to completely disregard everything else said about it in the Spirit Actions including the words of the Key and the title of the book in which the whole thing was tabulated.

For example, in the Action of 1584.05.21, Nalvage declared:

There are 30 calls yet to come. These 30 are the calls of Ni[nety-one] Princes and spiritual Governors unto whom the earth is delivered as a portion.  These bring in and again disp[ose] Kings and all the Governments upon the Earth, and vary the Nature of things …… with the variation of every moment.  Unto whom, the providence of the eternal judgment is already opened.  These are generally governed by the twelve Angels of the 12 Tribes: which are also governed by the 7 which stand before the presence of God.  Let him that can see, look up: and let him that can hear, attend, for this is wisdom. They are all spirits of the Air, not rejected, but dignified; and they dwell and have their habitation in the air, diversely and in sundry places, for their mansions are not alike, nor are their powers equal. Understand, therefore, that from the fire to the earth, there are 30 places or abidings: one above and beneath another, wherein these Creatures have their abode, for a time.

(T&FR p. 139-40; spelling modernised; as Turner (Elizabethan Magic, p. 83-4) points out, the entire scheme of Ayres belongs to the "Aërial" realm of the geocentric mediæval / Renaissance magical cosmology, and hence in the sublunary sphere of things subject to change.)

This is doubtless the source of Crowley and others referring to the 7-letter names as being those of "governors" of the Ayres; however, a passage in Latin immediately following appears to suggest that it is the Angels of the 12 tribes who are the governors of the 91 parts, some having many, some fewer, under their rule:

Per tota terra distributa sub 12 Principibus Angelis, 12 Tribuum Israel: quorum 12 aliqui plures, aliqui pauciores partes habent sub sua regimine ex 91 partibus in quas tota terra hic demonstratur esse divisa.  Apocalypsi Johannis Testimonium, de 12 Angelis 12 Tribuum, Cap. 21.

Quando dividebat Altissimus gentes, quando separabat filios Adam, constituit terminos populorum, juxta numerum filiorum Israel [Deut. xxxii: 8]: Hoc igitur hinc egergiè patere.

suggesting that the seven-letter names are the names of the Parts of the Earth themselves and not those of angels associated with but distinct from the Parts.  In the subsequent pages of T&FR where the seven-letters names are given, on two occasions they are explicitly said to be names of parts of the earth, or parts of the world on earth, each governed by one or another of the 12 angels of the 12 tribes.

In Ave’s “expounding” of the vision of the Watchtowers (T&FR p. 170) we are told of

… the Angels of all the Aires, which perfectly give obedience to the will of men, when they see them.  Hereby you may subvert whole countries without Armies […] By these you shall get the favour of all the Princes […] Hereby you shall know the secret Treasures of the waters, and unknown Caves of the Earth.

Compare the Call:

… ye are mighty in the parts of the Earth, and execute the Judgement of the Highest […] your God […] provided you for the government of the Earth and her unspeakable variety, furnishing your with a power understanding to dispose all things […] govern those that govern, cast down such as fall …

The implication being that the twelve Angelic Kings, or, if we continue to insist on them, the “Governors,” are set over the various parts of the surface of the Earth (“The earth, let her be governed by her parts…”).  The 7 before the presence of God are the angels on the outer heptagon of the seal of Æmeth.  The Aires themselves serve mainly as containers for the 91 parts.  Egil Asprem (Arguing with Angels, pp. 24-25) remarks of this:

The intention of this system seems to be that by ‘calling’ the right Aires […] the magician can gain the authority over the geographical entities and presumably the power to control great geopolitical events (thus indicated by the title of the book, “terrestrial victory”).  In other words, this was a form of magic most desirable for Dee, being the occasional counsellor to the Imperial Elizabethan throne.

As regarding the specific attributions to the world's surface -- Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and other places taken from Ptolomey's Geography via Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia (lib. I cap. xxxi), as well as place-names unknown prior to the Spirit Actions such as "Tolpam," "Onigap" and "Coxlant": prior to the delivery those names (T&FR pp. 153 sqq.), Nalvage attempted to point them out on “a great thing like a Globe, turning on two axell-trees.”  

Dee, finding this insufficiently precise, objected:

We beseech you to bound or determine the Countries or Portions of the Earth, by their uttermost Longitudes and Latitudes, or by some other certain manner.” 

Nalvage responded: 

Our manner is, not as it is of worldlings: We determine not places after the forms of legs, or as leaves are: neither we can imagine any thing after the fashion of an horn: as those that are Cosmographers do.  Notwithstanding the Angel of the Lord appeared unto Ptolomie, and opened unto him the parts of the Earth: but some he was commanded to secret: and those are Northward under your Pole.  But unto you, the very true names of the world in her Creation are delivered.

At the conclusion of this Action (p. 158), Dee queried regarding several lands known to him that were apparently not included in the 91 mentioned; some, he was told, were to be reckoned under “Sauromatia” (#46) and “Brytania” (#61), “and so it is of the rest.”  On being pressed about “Atlantis and the annexed places, under the King of Spain called the West Indies?” (referring, by context, to the North American continent and adjacent islands), Nalvage retorted “When these 30 appear, they can tell you what they own.  Prepare for tomorrow’s Action.”

No Action took place the next day.  Kelly and Dee quarrelled, Kelly pointing out that the names of the provinces and countries appeared in “one Volume of Cornelius Agrippa his works,” from which “he inferred, that our spiritual Instructors were Coseners to give us a description of the World, taken out of other Books: and therefore he would have no more to do with them.”  After some argument, Kelly refused to undertake another skrying session, and the next Action, on the 28th, treated of other subjects entirely; Nalvage drops out of the record for a while, reappearing in July for the completion of the Claves Angelicæ.

While one commentator (Robin E. Cousins, in the geographical appendix to Turner et al., Elizabethan Magic), suggested that “those 30” indicated the existence of another 30 Parts corresponding to areas unknown or vaguely known in Dee’s time, this would raise all kinds of problems with the system; considered rather in the context that the reeling off of the Ptolemaic names followed Dee’s rejection of the initial attempt to indicate the terrestrial locations, and Nalvage’s refusal to use human measurements, the instruction could rather have been to call up the 30 Ayres in turn to find out.

It might further be considered from the earlier statement of Nalvage already quoted, that the terrestrial governance of the 91 parts is subject to change over time, and so the list given, even if valid in 1584, is not necessarily still applicable today.

Lack of progress report 2022.06.25

Hardly anything done since last update: have been distracted by other things, and currently have some RL stuff that absolutely needs to be dealt with by next Thursday.

On a whim, ran a Google search on an obsolete word occurring in some of the magical texts in Sloane 3824; this turned up, besides copies of my own typesets and some pirated copies of Skinner & Rankine's books, a passage from Joscelyn Godwin's Theosophical Enlightenment (p. 93-4) in turn citing a 1987 Hermetic Journal article by Ron Heisler, mentioning as among items in the possession of Thomas Britton (1644-1714, a London charcoal merchant better known as a host / promoter of musical concerts) that were sold off in 1694, a collection of ritual paraphernalia and magical MSS. including a copy of the Lemegeton, a table of practice for "the Spirit Pamerfiel" (sic), and a "A brief Introduction explaining the Uses of the magical tables.  The practice of the East Table.  The regal invocation, together with the practice of the West, North, and South Tables..."  The former was almost certainly the "Table of Solomon" from the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia; the latter is either the MS. now known as Sloane 307 (Hans Sloane, per the Wikipedia page on Britton, acquired much of Britton's remaining collection when it was sold after his death) or another complete or partial copy of the Clavicula Tabularum Enochi.

[It is tempting to suggest that the other of the "two Magical Tables or Leaves about a yard square" was a copy of Dee's table of practice, but the description given makes this unlikely, even if we allow that the author of the sale catalogue could have mistaken the Angelic script for "Hebrew or Chaldee."]

Since this sale occurred after the death of Elias Ashmole, it's no help in establishing a date for the Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, of course.

Other items described in the sale catalogue including "a round solid Christal Glass, 3 inches and more diameter, and fixed on a solid Brass Stand" strongly indicate that Britton was actually practicing this stuff (whereas Sloane collected works on magic in order to study the subject as a department of psychopathology, or to debunk it).

Also turns out that a typeset, along with a German translation, of the Clavicula Tabularum Enochi (rather, the introductory section and the "Practice of the Tables" invocations) from Sloane 3821 was printed in 1993, in a book called Henoch Iadnah Mad, Das Wissen Der Götter by Ralf Löffler.  My knowledge of German is minimal, but this book also appears to be heavily founded on G.D. "Enochian magic" and includes several illustrations lifted from Liber Chanokh ("das Wissen der Götter" is simply a fairly literal German translation of iadnah Mad).

* * *

Also, finally finished re-doing the vector art of the Circle from the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia.  I Initially attempted to use Unicode Hebrew for the text, but trying to adjust text on a path which switches between right-to-left and left-to-right character order repeatedly was a complete nightmare, so kludged it by using the old NIHebrew face which maps the letters to ASCII.

* * *

I was wrong in my stated belief in a post earlier this year that "A Select Treatise as it was first discovered to the Egyptian Magi"  (Sloane MS. 3821 fol. 205-225), included in On the Invocation of Angels, had not previously been typeset: an edition by David Rankine was printed in 2018 as part of a Hadean Press chapbook series under the title Conjuring the Planetary Intelligences, supplemented by some materials from Agrippa and pseudo-Agrippa relating to the forms of planetary spirits, the magic squares of the planets, &c.  This edition appears (going on the preview of the Kindle ebook at Amazon) to omit the original title and a portion of the introduction.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (11)

My extended period of slackness continues and I currently need to work out where the hell I'm going to be living from the end of next month, but finally got the latest updates to the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia into a publishable form: mainly this includes finally adding a bibliography.

I'm still not entirely happy with the figure of the Circle but can't face fixing it right now.  As of this version the colour plate of the Hexagram, Pentagram and "Ring or Disc" (which as the author of the "Brother Enoch's Goetia" blog pointed out years ago, was almost certainly originally meant to be a plain band ring with the three names engraved around its inner and outer face and not the flat disc with the names in concentric circles as in the Mathers figure) are embedded bitmaps; but since Inkscape can export PDF files directly it should be possible to turn the entire plate into vector graphics.

I'll repeat here the suggestion I made in my endnotes to the Goëtia about those figures: that the scheme of coloured washes described by Mathers, and the serpent containing the spiral of names around the Circle (sourced by Mathers to an unspecified "private codex") were artistic / talismanic flourish due to Frederick Hockley.  My basis for this claim:

• There is a direct and fairly short line of transmission from Hockley through Kenneth MacKenzie to the founders of the Golden Dawn.
• Hockley made a lot of copies / compilations of magical MSS. for personal use, for friends and as work-for-hire, and his higher-effort productions (several of which have been published from extant copies in private collections) frequently have elaborations of this kind in figures.
• Hockley had in his hands a copy of the Lemegeton (omitting the Ars Notoria) and made copies.  The Wellcome collection includes material deriving from these, including incomplete copies of the Goëtia and Theurgia-Goëtia made by Henry Dawson Lea from a Hockley copy in Wellcome MS. 3203, and the fragmentary Magia de Profundis seu Clavicula Salomonis Regis (Wellcome MS. 4665).
• Both the above-mentioned Wellcome MSS. contain the outline description of the parts of the Lemegeton which closely matches the fourth parallel column in the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia (including the omission of the words "of Spirits" at the start of the description of the third book): far more closely than any of the parallel texts match any of the BL Lemegeton copies.

I don't currently believe the redactor of the Lemegeton and the author(s) of the "Invocation of Angels" texts and "Longobardus" were the same person, but they were writing around the same time, probably knew each other (and Ashmole) and exchanged MSS. and ideas, and both were likely attempting to create comprehensive systems dealing with various "worlds" of mediæval-Renaissance magical cosmology which also were consistent with the particular flavour of Official Christianity to which they subscribed.

Lack of progress report 2022.04.09

Very little done since the last update, mostly just minor tinkering.

Since right now I can't face giving the remaining figures from Sloane 3824 a proper re-drawing, and I have completed the text, uploaded a provisional release of the "Trithemius Redivivus" (Steganographia) and "Magick and Magical Elements" (Heptameron) sections to Scribd.  This still omits a page of figures from the latter work, but as those are not part of the original Heptameron, have no caption, and are not explained or even mentioned in the text in which they appear, I suspect they're just something that was already on the MS. sheet when Ashmole or whoever started copying "Magical Elements."  It also doesn't have a proper bibliography.

EDIT 2022.04.11: Also uploaded the last round of fixes to the Theurgia-Goetia.

Lack of progress report 2022.03.15

Initial release of Ars Theurgia-Goëtia is now up on Scribd.  There are some minor typos I've already discovered since posting it, but not enough to currently warrant doing a full rebuild of the thing.  Because the antiquated version of Word I'm using doesn't play nice with the vector graphics software I'm using (i.e. I can't simply copy and paste .svg vector objects from Inkscape into Word 2007), all figures have been turned into 300 dpi bitmaps.

Possibly going to take another stab at the remaining bits of Longobardus (i.e. my typeset of Sloane 3824).  The only text still to be transcribed is the latter half of Trithemius Redivivus (about five leaves), but a large number of talismanic figures still remain to be redrawn (those forming the bulk of the second division of the codex, and a page embedded in the reworked Heptameron but nowhere explained or even mentioned in the text).

While working on the Theurgia-Goëtia I turned up a few things that suggest that the original redactor used Trithemius Redivivus (not the Sloane 3824 copy -- it has some errors in spirit names not found in the Lemegeton, not to mention it breaks off abruptly in ch. 13) rather than a printed Latin Steganographia.  Specifically this is based on the rearrangements of some of the tables of "Dukes" under the chief spirits, which as set out in the 3824 copy do not generally preserve the arrangement from the printed Steganographia but are set out in two columns for day and night, and in the specific case of those under Raysiel, disarrange the order, displacing Lamas and Thurcal to the bottom of the list of nocturnal spirits, in which position they appear in the Theurgia-Goëtia (compare Sloane 3824 fol. 130r with p. 41 of the 1606 printing).

Lack of progress report 2022.03.07

Been slack & getting sidetracked as usual (e.g. creating & fiddling with the above design).  In any case, all spirit characters from the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia have now been re-drawn.

Since there are notable differences in the orthography of the spirit seals even between the three Sloane Lemegeton texts, never mind later copies like Harley 6483 or Wellcome 3203 (the latter woefully incomplete anyway), I had to make a bunch of judgement calls redrawing them.  One of these is to try to keep the style as uniform as possible throughout.  While Sloane 3825 is probably the least corrupt Lemegeton MS. known, it still has a bunch of copyist errors in both text and figures, and style in the figures is uneven: as can be seen by the images posted by Peterson, some have very heavy line-work, leading in some cases to loss of details; others appear to have been drawn with a much thinner pen.

The planned appendices also mostly done: mainly just need to check the bibliography and actually finish the introduction.

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 300 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).