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."

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.

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 2022.01.21

Well, back to Sloane 3824 for now.

The second set of talisman designs are going to be a nightmare to redraw: much of the writing on them is borderline-legible and some of them were very hastily scrawled with more detail crammed into the circle that was reasonable given the size of the thing, the pen being used and the scribe's general standard of line-work: many have notes by the side indicating some detail to be corrected.

With that in mind I switched instead to working on the variant Heptameron at the end instead.  This is also making my head hurt in trying to work out its stemma.  Like printed Heptameron, it is split into two parts, but their order has been reversed: the "considerations" of the seven days with their specific conjurations make up the first part (fol. 131-139), followed by some summary tables of names and examples of the Circle design; then there is:

An Introduction, teaching the use of the foregoing treatise & thereby other experiments & operations of the like nature orders or offices as a president refer'd to the Spirits of the Atr, being a sufficient exemplification for any Phylosopher Skillfull in the Art of Magick, & well Knowing how to make a trew & racionall distinction beetweene the Cœlestiall blessed Angells, or inteligence, and the Cœlestially Dignified Elementall Angells, or Spirits of light, & also of other Elementall powers, or Spirits, both of light & darkness;  & so by nature and office, both good & Evill, together with others, called wandering spirts of the Aijr, of the like nature & office, but of no orders, mansions, or proper place of Residence; but moving even like as flies in the son, without sensible subjection any superiour powers; together with Infernall powers, called spirits of Darkness, or Devils, who are saide by nature & office to be wholly evill, & therefore of themselves not to be invocated, Moved, or called forth to visible Appearance, as the other Elementall powers, or Spirits are; & may bee; but other Spirits of their nature, orders, & offices may by them, & the power given to them (by Divine permission in the blessed Trinity) & in their names be moved & called forth to visible Appearance, for such, or those purposes, which may, & usially doth serve to the benifit of mankind; &c.

. . . and that's just the title, for the general rubric and conjurations (fol. 141-154), starting with the composition of the circle, corresponding roughly to the first part of the printed Heptameron.  The two sections almost seem to be by different authors: the second part, as previously remarked, completely cuts loose bloating pseudo-Abano's text with verbiage, as well as adding an entire additional section of increasingly strongly worded constraints with accompanying rubric for uncoöoperative spirits, whereas the former has some minor rearrangements and paraphrases (and incorporates the description of the forms familiar to the spirits of the Planets from pseudo-Agrippa) but is nowhere near the Invocation of Angels level of verbosity.

In the former section, while there are a few hints that the redactor used the 1655 Turner text in some respects, the bulk of it appears to have been independently translated from the Latin, either from a printed edition, or from a manuscript copy (various magical MSS. in English and Latin of the late 16th & early 17th century contain substantial copies from pseudo-Abano, usually untranslated).  Possibly the planetary section significantly pre-dated the second part and was copied and slightly modified by the redactor of the Invocation of Angels series (for example, replacing the conclusion of the conjurations of the days with wording that strongly recalls the Claves Angelicæ) prior to going all-out.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that on closer examination it's not entirely clear whether passages that I initially tagged "sec. man." were in fact by someone other than the original copyist of the text that now forms the last article in Sloane 3824: that is to say, the text that is clearly in the same scrawl as the first major division of that MS., is not confined to marginalia or intralineal corrections, but includes substantial parts of the body: problem is, the alternative explanation is that the copyist (i.e. Ashmole) randomly switched handwriting style for no clear reason between different sections.

[Header image: Heptameron circle for the first "magical hour" of the day on a Friday in Winter -- well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.]

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.

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.

Lack of progress report.

Back online again & after some weeks of slacking, re-playing Ghost of Tsushima, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Horizon Zero Dawn, my main computer is up and running again (tho' I did have to download a copy of the manual for the thing's mainboard before I could start it up) and I've actually kinda-sorta resumed serious work on Sloane 3824 (as well as toyed with the concept of making a collection of the "Invocation of Angels" texts from 3821 & 3825, but that will require a legible copy of the latter).

The date of 1649 claimed for Sloane MS. 3824 in A Book of Treasure Spirits is, as regards the two major divisions of the collection, at least a decade too early.  The statement "now it is June 1649" occurs on fol. 48r in the course of a somewhat rambling piece arguing for the possibility of human colloquy with Angels.  Even if this statement is credible, which is doubtful for reasons to be discussed, it would refer to when that particular passage was first written: however, that section of 3824 is not the author's holograph but a copy made by Elias Ashmole from another (now apparently lost) MS., as indicated on fol. 31r.

The immediately preceding section of 3824 (fol. 23-29) consists of a set of conjurations and rubric for evoking spirits, crudely nailed together from the Heptameron and the Ars Goëtia.  The materials from the former work are verbatim or near-verbatim from the 1665 edition of Robert Turner's translation of Henry Cornelius Agrippa his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, of Geomancie, &c. &c. &c. (the 1655 edition left the conjurations untranslated) even down to an eccentricity of orthography, giving a terminus a quo for Ashmole's copy of "Longobardus" and the material following it in the same MS. book.

The material on fol. 32-52 consists of excerpts from a copy of the angel-magic treatise Janua Magica Reserata, which were copied by Ashmole as not being in his other copy of that work (now Sloane 3825).  The Janua contains extensive borrowings from the translation of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy by "J.F." (as Ashmole notes on 3824 fol. 30r), published in 1651.  It also contains significant cribs from John Dee's spirit diaries, as published in 1659 by Meric Casaubon: indeed, the "June 1649" statement occurs directly before one such passage.  The credibility of the date thus depends on the likelihood of (a) the passage in which it occurs having been originally written independently and later incorporated into the Janua and (b) the author having had access to Dee's spirit diaries in the Cotton library a decade prior to their publication.  Given further that the general thrust of the entire section seems to be arguing for not merely the possibility of colloquy with Angels, but the compatibility of the angel-magic practices with the local form of Official Christianity, it makes far more sense to view it as a response to polemics like Casaubon's introduction to T&FR.  This is leaving aside the high likelihood that the Janua was of common authorship with Clavicula Tabularum Enochi / "The Practice of the Tables" (Sloane MS. 307 / Sloane MS. 3821 fol. 2-157) which demonstrably depends on Casaubon's typeset for reasons that have been repeated ad nauseam.

The other major section of 3824, fol. 89-120 (a typeset of which forms the bulk of Book of Treasure Spirits) was an originally independent MS. book that was bound up with other items at some point prior to Hans Sloane acquiring the thing in Jekyll's estate sale.  There are a few things giving it a terminus a quo: some borrowings from T&FR, which all occur towards the end (fol. 116r, 120v, discussed in previous posts).  A design for a magic circle, in a similar hand to the rest of the book but on a loose leaf (fol. 105, not counted in that division's original pagination) is based on Agrippa's scale of the number 10 and perpetuates a printing error in the 1651 English edition, referring to the third Kabbalistic Sephirah as "Binah or prina" (in the table of the scale on p. 214 the correct Hebrew spelling and the familiar Romanized form are given; the misprint "prina" occurs on p. 368 (Book III cap. 10), where the 1533, 1550, 1567, 1578, 1600 and 1630 Latin editions (those were just the ones I checked) have "bina").

While this last is no further help in dating the MS., the final piece in that section, an untitled account of the three chief infernal spirits and four Kings of the quarters from the De officiis spirituum tradition, has strong parallels with the "Offices of the Spirits" section of the Folger "Book of Magic" (pp. 73 sqq.) although the conjurations and rubric have been rewritten (removing Roman Catholic elements for example), the descriptions of the chiefs have been redacted (omitting to mention that Beelzebub is wont to kill a magician who summons him without using the proper invocation and suffumigation, or that Satan will pester the invocant to pray for him to be restored to his former throne and place) and the bulk of the description of Egyn, King of the North, has unaccountably been omitted, the text cutting off (possibly due to a missing page in the scribe's source text) after the description of his nostrils.

Of Keys and Gates (5)

After much prevarication, I've uploaded the Janua material from Sloane 3824 to Scribd.  There are almost certainly typos & transcription errors remaining in this, but running a spellcheck on it is of limited use given that I took a conscious decision not to modernise or standardise spelling in the transcript.

As for the rest of the MS., currently about 2/3 of the way through the page count on text transcription, but lagging some way behind that on cleaning up / redrawing figures.

On closer examination, the material on fol. 22-29 looks less like an intermediate stage in the Heptameron being turned into the conjurations & rubric of the Goëtia (as I originally conjectured on skim-reading it) and more like someone took material from those two works and crudely nailed them together: it follows the Heptameron closely, with certain modifications and omissions in the rubric, and the design of the Pentacle garbled, up to the end of the Exorcism of the Aërial Spirits, then cuts into the conjurations and rubric of the Ars Goëtia beginning with "The Constraint" that follows the second conjuration and carrying on to the end, then adding a concluding prayer.  It also, owing to a heavy dependence on the 1665 Robert Turner translation of the Heptameron (the 1655 edition left most of the conjurations &c. in Latin, remember), gives an earliest possible date for that section of the MS., and probably the following 50 leaves too.

The "Second Parte of the Art of King Solomon" on fol. 53-71 appears to be an incomplete copy of a variant version of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia.  There are comments apparently indicating lists of spirit names and seals were in the source text but not copied; Ashmole also left a large space on fol. 54r for the figure of the compass, and wrote in the caption for the diagram but didn't copy the figure itself.

[EDIT: Fixed a copy-paste error I made when first redrawing the diagram.  There is a much more serious issue with the figure, dating back to the original compilation of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia: the 16 "Princes" with fixed compass points should be evenly distributed around the compass, i.e. Padiel in ESE, Aseliel in SSE, Gediel in SSW, &c., as they are in Lib. I of the Steganographia (see table and figure at end of the first chapter) from which the whole scheme derives.  This is likely a result of a level of lost-in-translation with terminology for intermediate compass directions.]

Passages that also appear in the Sloane MS. 3825 Lemegeton generally closely agree with that copy, but conjurations for the chief spirits are given at length (there are minor verbal variations, but they generally differ only in names and compass directions), whereas the Sloane Lemegeton MSS. just give the opening of each conjuration, with a general form at the end with names and the opening lines to be varied as appropriate, completely different from the formula in Sloane 3824.

The transcription cuts off abruptly at the bottom of fol. 70r, in the conjuration of the 16th spirit, Cabariel; there is a catch-word at the bottom of the page, but the verso is apparently blank.  On fol. 71 is what appears to be a form of oath to be sworn by a summoned spirit once you've actually got it to show up (not in the Sloane Lemegeton versions).

Of Keys and Gates (4)

Well, I've finished doing the main key-entry on the additional excerpts from the Janua in Sloane 3824.  Still needs some checking, layout work & a few more attempts at making out doubtful or near-illegible words.  In some of the longer passages it seemed that the copyist's handwriting was gradually deteriorating as his brain melted at the sheer inanity of what he was transcribing, or the writer's tendency to go off on two-page diatribes at a complete tangent from whatever the ostensible point was.  Or maybe I'm just projecting here.

In excerpt 'K', "Dr. R," if that really was the author's name, is so insistent on refuting the notion that the the spirits of the middle or terrestrial order were the souls or ghosts of dead humans, that amidst all the ranting and rambling we never actually get any indication of a positive view on what the damn things actually are.

Possibly these sections were not "additions" at all, but part of the original work that were deliberately redacted out by a later editor / copyist as adding little of value to it.

It is also hard to believe the statement "it is now June 1649" (fol. 48r) when the ensuing text is copied out of a book published a decade later, as Ashmole noted in the margin, complete with a page reference.  

[In any case, Ashmole's copy was made in 1665 or later, since the previous item in the notebook demonstrably depends on the second edition of Robert Turner's translation of the supplementary texts to Agrippa (Henry Cornelius Agrippa his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, of Geomancie, Magical Elements of Peter de Abano, &c. &c. &c.) published that year.]

Seriously though, reading those passages raises the question: who was the author talking to?  It seems . . . unlikely that the Janua was written for publication (and of course it was not published until over 300 years after its composition).  On the other hand, its form, and the level of structure & organisation shown, certainly in Sloane 3825, is utterly unlike what we find in magical MS works that appear to have been for the private use of individual practitioners (compare the Folger Book of Magic, the Munich Manual of Necromancy, BL Sloane MS. 3851, Bodleian Rawlinson D.252, Rawlinson D.253 & e Mus. 173) which are light on theory (a few roughly translated or summarised excerpts from Agrippa are in Sloane 3851) and lighter on multi-page screeds trying to justify their practices.

The material was perhaps a response to anti-magical polemics of the time, that best known today probably being Meric Casaubon's preface to his publication of Dee's spirit diaries, which latter characterised the spirit actions as "A Work of Darknesse" and argued at great length that Dee & Kelly's "Angels" were not fraud or delusion, but "false lying Spirits" sent by "the Divel of Hell (as we commonly term him)": & the main intent was to crush any doubts that might have existed in the minds of the readers (or indeed of the author) as to the compatibility of the angel-magic practices with whatever form of Official Christianity formed the basis of their religious faith.  The response to polemics like Casaubon's also had a practical aspect: a significant part of the "Isagogicall Observations" following the Janua's theoretical section (Sloane MS. 3825 fol. 40r-47r) and most of the "Further Instructions" following the "First Key" (53v-56r) is taken up with the question of just how to distinguish such "illuding Spirits" from "Angels of Light,"[1] thus reassuring the reader that it was possible for them to tell the difference if they followed the correct procedure

[1] For a detailed study, based on the copy of those sections in Harley MS. 6482, see Egil Asprem, "False, Lying Spirits and Angels of Light: Ambiguous Mediation in Dr. Rudd's Seventeenth-Century Treatise on Angel Magic."

Of Keys and Gates (3)

So far I've identified four main sources for the preliminary "theoretical" section of Janua Magica Reserata.

1. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Englished by "J.F." (John French) and printed in London in 1651.  Ashmole spotted cribs from five chapters & recorded them in what is now Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 30r.  (I. 11 on Ideas; III. 10 on the 9 orders of Angels; III. 24 for various sets of angel names; III 36 & 37 on the soul, man being made after the image of God, &c.).  There are more . . . probably amounting to well over half the word-count of those 37 leaves.  The verbal agreement with "J.F." is at a level that makes independent translation implausible in the extreme, and the perpetuation of printing errors in the 1651 edition (e.g., spelling the name of the third Kabbalistic Sephirah as "Prina") makes it unlikely that the compiler copied this material from Dr. French's translation while the latter was still in manuscript.

2. A True & Faithful Relation of what passed for many yeers between Dr. John Dee . . . and some Spirits, edited by Meric Casaubon and printed in London in 1659.

• In the section "Of Angels & Spirits" on fol. 18r, the claim is ascribed to "Johannes Trithemius, the learned Abbot of Spanheim, in Lib: polygraph" that "never any Good Angel was read of, to have appeared in the forme of a woman."  I cannot state with absolute certainty that such a claim does not appear in the Polygraphiae libri sex, although given that volume's subject matter (it is generally recognised as the first printed work on cryptography) it seems unlikely; where it does appear is in the same author's Liber octo quæstionum, quas illi dissolvendas proposuit Maximilianus Cæsar (responses to a series of questions on theological and other matters which had been posed to him by the Emperor, first printed in 1515).  In the course of answering question 6, on the power of witches (De potestate maleficarum), the abbot of Spanheim referred to various classical and German legends of water-spirits in female form, Naiads, Nereids, Wasserfrauen, then continued, “Sancti autem Angeli quoniam affectione nunquam variantur uniformiter semper apparent in forma virili.  Nusquam enim legimus scriptus, quod bonus spiritus in forma fit visus muliebri aut bestiæ cuiuscunque, sed semper in specie virili.”  What does this have do to with Dee and his spirits, you may wonder?  Well, the Janua's response to this, beginning "It is evident that the Angels of God are incomprehensible to those that are their inferiours" is a near-verbatim quote (with a few omissions, single-word changes (e.g. "they" for "we"), and variations in punctuation) from the speech of Galvah (described as "a woman like an old maid in a red Peticote, and with a red silk upper bodies, her hair rould about like a Scottish woman, the same being yellow" -- T&FR, p. 10) in response to Dee calling her out with the above-quoted line from Lib. oct. quæst. (the speech is on p. 13 of T&FR).

• In the section "A Brief Summary of several orders & Hierarchies of some particular Angels & Spirits" after referring to various traditional magical & astrological divisions of things such as the four Elements, the 28 Mansions of the Moon, &c., continues (fol. 19v-20r) "[God] hath again divided the Heavens into Eight & forty Angles or parts, Eighteen whereof are Superiours & Cœlestiall, & the other thirty more inferiour & Airerial [sic]; whose Mantions are not alike, nor poweres Equal, for that he hath Miraculously placed Eighteen Divisions above the fiery Region in the Heavens, [...] the Other thirty Ayeriall Angells [read "Angles"] Orbs or Divisions, he hath Originally Decreed, and amongst other wonderfull works of the Creation, orderly placed, one above another, from the Earth to the fiery Region, in the Highermost part of the Air, wherein are Located ninety one Angelicall princes or spirituall governors, & many other Subservient  Angels under them, who are spirits of the Air, not Rejected but Dignified; And who are governed by the twelve Angels of the twelve tribes: which twelve Angels are againe governed, by the Seven Mighty Angels, which stand before the Most High and Holy Throne, & unspeakable presence, as Dispositers of the Heavenly Decrees, preordinately Determined, who transmits the Divine will & pleasure of the Highest, unto the twelve tributary Angels, & who againe Distributeth & passeth the same unto the ninty one Ayeriall princes, unto whom the Governments of the Earth is by Divine Determination Delivered [...] & whose offices are [...] to bring in, & againe Dispose of Terrestriall governers & Governments, & vary the nature of things with the variation of Every moment, unto whome the providence of the Eternal judgment of God is already opened [...]" (and so on, for another page and a half, specifically mentioning "the Cœlestiall Angel Ave"): compare for example T&FR p. 139-140 on "the 91 Princes and spiritual Governors."

• The series of exhortations and admonitions on fol. 23v to 25r (immediately prior to the table of Sephiroth, and following a lengthy extract / paraphrase from Of Occult Philosophy Book III chapter 20, "Of the annoyance of evil spirits &c.") is drawn from various sermons of Gabriel, Nalvage, and a "man with a black Gown" who didn't give a name (T&FR, pp, 160, 162, 161, 89, 118, 76-7, 44).

• In "Some Further Instructions" (fol. 53v-56r; cf. McLean, A Treatise on Angel Magic, pp. 183-6, "A Second Introduction," Dee's interrogation of Ave (Action of 1584.06.20, T&FR p.169) is quoted (with the names removed) as an example of how to ascertain the genuineness of supposed angelic manifestations.

• Phrases from the English of the Claves Angelicæ appear in the invocations or "Celestial Keys"; "make us partakers of undefiled knowledge," "we the servants of the same your God," "we move you [...] in power and presence, whose workes shall be a song of Honour, & the praise of your God, in your Creation."

Of course, this raises the vexed question of whether the compiler could have had access to Dee's spirit diaries in the Cotton Library and made these extensive copies prior to their publication in 1659.  All I can confidently say about this is that if he was the author of "The Practice of the Tables" then he didn't (Coronzom says hi).

3. Arbatel: de Magia Veterum.  In the section of "Beneficiall Aphorism" on fol. 10v-13r, nos. 2,-6, 8 & 10 (possibly some of the others) are quoted, paraphrased or adapted from the aphorisms of the Arbatel.  There is enough variation in wording with Robert Turner's translation (pub. 1655) to make an independent translation from the Latin believable.  Additionally, this was the most likely source for the Olympic Planetary Spirits, whose names are given on fol. 33v in the chapter on names of Celestial Angels and Sacred Intelligences.

4. Pseudo-Paracelsus, Archidoxes Magicae.  After a description of spirits of the middle or terrestrial order cribbed from Agrippa lib. iii cap. 32 (fol. 38r), the Janua enters into a discussion of "certain things vulgarly called Gnomi" which closely parallels the discussion on pp. 51-2 of On the Supreme Mysteries of Nature, translated by Robert Turner and printed in London in 1656 (again, there is enough variation with Turner's text to suggest an independent translation).  This passage in turn was founded on the doctrine of elementals in Paracelsus' Liber de nymphis, sylvanis, pygmæus et salamandris &c., which in turn derived from and systematized various German folk-traditions.  As it happens, a substantial excerpt from De nymphis in English translation appears in Harley 6482, shortly before the start of the excerpt from the Janua (Treatise on Angel Magic, pp. 153-168).

Additionally, some minor use was made of pseudo-Abano, Heptameron seu elementa Magica.  The lists of Angels of the Sephiroth &c., while mostly following Agrippa's scale of the number 10, counter-change the attributions of Raphaël and Michaël, referring the former to Hod and Mercury, the latter to Tiphareth and Sol, in order to fit the planetary scheme of the Heptarmeron.  While on its own this is inconclusive, as pseudo-Abano was not the only source to use that arrangement, a set of angels mentioned in the conjurations of the seven days of the week in the Heptameron / Lucidarium, Booël, Pastor, Acimoy, Salamia, Dagiel, Tegra and Orphaniel are cited in the third through ninth Keys, and Tegra appears as Tetra, following a misprint in the "Lyons" editions of Agrippa's Opera (carried over into Turner's translation).  There are other parallel passages in those conjurations, but these ultimately derive from the account of the seven days of Creation in Genesis I.

One thing which almost certainly does derive from English magical manuscript traditions rather than printed sources appears at the very end of the "theoretical" section (fol. 40r): the Seven Faerie Sisters, here spelt Lilla, Restilia, Foca, Tolla (possibly an error for Folla, the scribe's capital 'F' and 'T' are very similar in form), Affrica, Julia and Venulla.  These are also mentioned in the Folger "Book of Magic,"  Folger X.d. 234, Sloane MSS. 1727 and 3824, Bodleian e Mus. 173, Chetham's A.4.98 and elsewhere.

Of keys and gates (2)

Since the copy of Sloane 3825 I'm using at the moment has large sections that are completely unreadable, I'm not current in a position to make my own transcription of the Magick Gate Unbarr'd (Janua Magica Reserata), which means that I'm working from someone else's (very much in copyright) edition; hence, while I have found a number of readings I disagree with in sections I *have* been able to check, I won't be publishing the actual text any time soon (i.e. unless & until I can get my own copy of the microfilm & make better prints from it, or the BL digitises the original & puts it online).  What I have been able to do is to redraw some of the seals of the Archangels, which also gave me a reason to start learning a new vector graphics program (the dodgy copy of Corel Draw that I was using way back doesn't work on any version of Windows from the past decade).  Followeth those I've done so far:

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* * *

Those of you who have Adam McLean's Treatise on Angel Magic, which contains part of the Janua, will note that these are totally different to the designs in that work.  While Peter Smart, the scribe of Harley 6482, could write the square Hebrew letters better than many writers or copyists of magical MSS. of the period (and thus never, for example, rendered the Tetragrammaton as רהרה, RAHRAH), and also understood how the system of vowel points worked -- his other known writings include a copy of a text on Hebrew grammar and pronunciation -- he introduced multiple mis-spellings, most of which are explicable by him not knowing the original orthography of the names and back-transliterating them into pointed Hebrew from Romanized forms; thus we see spurious extra alephs in the -iah Angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash, Chokmah (חכמה) written הוחמא, Sabaoth (צבאות) as שבות, &c.

Meanwhile I'm gradually getting the hang of Elias Ashmole's scrawl — hey, at least it's not a 16th-century secretary hand — and plodding through the additional text sections of the Janua in Sloane 3824.  That and trying to identify the cribs from "Dr. French his translation of Cornelius Agrippa his Occult Philosophy" that E.A., not having the luxury of a digitised copy of the text with a Ctrl+F function, missed.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (7)

Correction / clarification to the previous post about the proto-Goëtia in Sloane MS. 3824 (now I actually have a copy of the MS., admittedly as a badly-digitised microfilm): the last spirit in the De Officiis fragment, is given as Sondenna, aliter Sendenna, which matches the printed TFR, thus removing the need for repeated copying.  Moral: never rely on dodgy copies of other people's transcriptions.  Also, the short entry following regarding two spirits, Maserien and Hermcloe who "were the Servants And familiars of the L. C. E. of S. 1607" is explicable with reference to TFR, page *34 (Action of 1607.03.24, Cotton Appendix XLVI part ii. fol. 229r).

The characters of Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius are written very small, the same height as a line of the text or slightly higher.

For comparison purposes, here are those characters (cleaned up / retouched from images of the MS.), followed by the Mathers versions:

From my initial studies of Sloane 3824, material in this collection does seem to be an important predecessor, working notes even, for the first two books of the Lemegeton.  

Fol. 22r-29v contain a series of "Consecrations & Benedictions" leading into a series of conjurations addressed to the "spirit Vassago or Usago."  This borrows heavily from the Heptameron; a slightly simplifed version of the "pentacle" appears, and the first conjuration is an English translation of pseudo-Abano's Exorcismus Spirituum Aërorum.  After that, the conjurations and rubric closely follows the Goëtia through to the license to depart; following the general instruction to "[make] prayer to God for the great blessing he hath bestowed upon you in granting you your desires and delivering you from  all the malice of the enemy the devil," an actual form of prayer is given (concluding with the Gloria in Latin).

EDIT: the text of this section is the Heptameron on its way to becoming the Ars Goëtia.  However, this particular copy is, well, a copy: the materials in the first 80 leaves or so of Sloane MS 3824 appear to be a collection of copies made by Elias Ashmole from various other MS. sources, probably at least three different: (a) "Longobardus," a collection of extremely verbose & legalistic conjurations for traditional concerns such as finding treasure & recovering stolen goods, (b) a partial copy of the Janua Magica Reserata with additional passages not found in Sloane MS. 3825 and (c) a proto-Lemegeton including the material mentioned above, and the incomplete Ars Theurgia-Goëtia mentioned below.

Fol. 53r-71v are titled "The Second Parte of the Art of King Solomon,"  The opening of this section (up to 54r) is more or less identical to the preamble of the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia, although the figure of the compass is either missing, or was too faint to show up in the crappy scans I'm using (there is a blank space where it should be, and the text refers to it).  This is followed by descriptions of Carnesiell, Caspiel, Amenadiel, Demoriel, Pamersiel, Padiel, Camuel, Aseliel, Barmiel, Gedial, Asyriel, Maseriel, Magaras, Dorochiel, Vsiel and Cabariel (i.e. 16 of the 20 chief spirits with fixed abodes, and none of the wanderers); only a few are given seals, and the names and seals of their chief subordinates are AWOL.  The conjuration for each is given at length, although these generally vary only in the name and the direction to which the Spirit is assigned.  At the end is another lengthy conjuration addressed to Padiel, with an oath to be sworn by the spirit. 

As previously remarked, fol. 110r-111v contains "An Experiment of the Spirit Vassago, who may be called upon to appear in a Christall Stone, or Glass or otherwise without," including a character for Vassago slightly simpler than the Goëtia version.  A similar "experiment" for Agares follows.  Following a ritual to cause the spirit Bleth to appear in a glass of water, are brief descriptions of eight more spirits (115v-116r), with simple seals for five of them, including Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius, the remaining additions to the Goëtia.

On fol. 116v are given "The Names of severall Spirits, both with and without their Characters."  25 spirits have characters next to their names, most fairly simple; while some have similar general morphology to characters of subordinate spirits in the Theurgia-Goëtia, I have yet to definitely identify any as being the same, and several of the names are unreadable in my copy.

Halfway down 117r begins an account of the chief infernal spirits and Kings of the quarters, an important part of the De Officiis Spirituum tradition that was apparently redacted out by Wier in order to make the Pseudomonarchia unuseable.  This concludes with a generic conjuration for the Kings and their chief ministers (to be varied by substituting appropriate names and directions).

On fol. 121ro-130vo, in a different hand to the preceding (and bound up with it later) is a text called Trithemius Redivivus, an English translation of a portion of Book i of the Steganographia, from which the Ars Theurgia-Goëtia derived its spirit names (while apparently missing the point of the book, which uses a variety of techniques to encode messages in what appear on the surface to be innocuous passages or strings of barbarous words).

The final article in Sloane 3824 (131r-154v) is a rearranged and heavily modified version of the Heptameron, "The Magick and Magicall Elements of  the Seven days of þe week, with their Appropriate hours, and the four Annual Seasons."  After the considerations and conjurations of the seven days, and various tables of names for the hours, days and seasons, follows an "Introduction," not found in the printed Heptameron, which I reproduce in full:

"An Introduction, teaching the use of the foregoing treatis of thereby other experiments or operations of the like nature orders or offices as a president refer'd to the spirits of the Ayr, being a sufficient exemplification for any Philosopher Skillfull in the Art of Magick, & well knowing how to make a trew & racionall distinction beetweene the Cœlestiall & blessed Angells, or intelligences, and the Cœlestially Dignified Elementall Angells, or Spirits of Light, & also of other Elementall powers, or Spirits, both of light & darkness; & so by nature and office, both good & Evill, together with others, called wandering spirits of the Aÿr, of the like nature & office, but of no orders, mansions, or proper place of Residence; but moving even like as flies in the son, without sensible Subjection to any superiour powers; together with Infernall powers, called spirits of Darkness, or Devils; who are saide by nature & office to be wholly evill, & therefore of themselves not to be invocated, moved, or called forth to visible Appearance; as the other Elementall powers, or spirits are; & may bee; but other spirits of their natures, orders, & offices may be them, & the power given to them (by Divine permission in the blessed Trinity) & in their names be moved & called forth to visible appearance, for such, or those purposes, which may, & usually (?) doth serve to the benifit of mankind; &c."

The instruction in forming the circle and preliminary rites from the Heptameron follows; the "ANCOR: ANACOR: AMIDES" prayer for robing is significantly extended and for the remainder of the work the text diverges significantly; the conjurations are padded out with additional verbiage while the general rubric is retained.  After the License to Depart follows a series of increasingly strongly worded "constraints" for uncoöperative Spirits, which with their rubric occupy the last four and a bit leaves of the MS., concluding with "the great Chaine or Sentence" in which the exorcist (having placed the spirit's name on a parchment, wrapped about with an iron wire, inside a metal box, on top of a charcoal brazier) declares:

"so behold (o you Spirit N:) we do powerfully hereby cast you forth into þe bottomless pit of unquenchable flames or other place of darkness, even the most terrable Tophet of endless & unspeakable torments, wherein you shall remaine bound, or Chained up, untill the dreadfull and great day of judgement, and there shall never be more remembrance of thee; before the face of God, who shall come to judge the quick & the dead, & the whorld by fire, as a due & just reward of this your disobedience, obstinacy & Rebellion, fiat, fiat, fiat."

The "BERALANENSIS: BALDACHIENSIS" conjuration (first conjuration in Ars Goëtia, conjuration to be said after the exorcism of the Aërial spirits and prayer to the quarters in the Heptameron), I've not found in 3824 yet, but it's entirely credible I missed it.

Of keys and gates (1)

The characterisation (e.g. in the BL catalogue) of the material on fol. 32-52 of Sloane MS. 3824 as "extracts from Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy" is not completely accurate and appears based on a careless reading of the scribal notes on fol. 30r & 31r combined with not checking against the passages that actually appear on the following pages.

Rather, it appears that the scribe (generally believed to be Elias Ashmole) had before him (a) the codex now known as BL Sloane MS. 3825, of which fol. 3-95 (current numbering) contain a treatise on angel-magic known as the Janua Magica Reserata (lit. "the Magical Gate Unlocked"), and (b) another codex containing the preliminary chapters of the Janua (up to the start of the "Isagogicall Observations" at fol. 40r) with ten substantial interpolations assigned to a "Dr. R."; and these interpolations are what follows.  The letters A to K in Sloane MS. 3825 are the insertion marks for these interpolated sections.

[I will post them when I've finished transcribing them, which may take a while.]

Identifying "Dr. R." with the "Dr. Rudd" from whose papers Harley MSS. 6479-6486 were said to have been copied (although the authority for this statement is a known liar and plagiarist) is made ever so slightly problematic by the fact that the "Dr. R." interpolations into the Janua that Ashmole copied do not, in fact appear, in "Dr. Rudd's" version of the Janua (Harley MS. 6482); in fact, none of preliminary theoretical part of the Janua (Sloane MS. 3825 fol. 2r-40r) was copied into Harley 6842; what parallels there are are consistent with independent derivation from the same (mostly printed) sources (e.g., there is some overlap between the two in the material drawn from Agrippa).

The cribs from "Dr. French his translation of Cornelius Agrippa his Occult Philosophy" spotted by Ashmole were in portions, though not the entirety, of the excerpts copied and the original text of the Janua.  A typeset of the Janua can be found in Skinner & Rankine's Keys to the Gateway of Magic. 

[I have to keep reminding myself, that as much as I keep facepalming at the editors' myth-making, shaky logic and presenting speculation as fact, it is unfair to critique that book for not being something it was never advertised as, and probably never intended to be: the important questions for the target audience are not "who wrote this and when?" "which bits of this text, if any, are original compositions, and which copied from printed books?" or even "what ideas influenced the author of this, and what was its subsequent influence?" so much as "can I usefully incorporate this material into my personal practice, and if so, how?"]

The Janua as a whole is much more deserving of the title A Treatise on Angel Magic than Harley 6482, which stripped out the material giving the theoretical basis for the whole thing & replaced it with a mishmash of excerpts.  EDIT: the preliminary sections of the Janua are themselves largely quoted and paraphrased from other works, but they have been edited and arranged to develop a theme and set the stage for the practical part, whereas the excerpts in Harley 6482 were probably copied into the notebook independently of, and prior to, the "Celestial Keys."

While I don't want to be too dogmatic on this point, the stylistic similarities and shared phrasing in the two works suggests that the Janua and "The Practice of the Tables" (i.e. the text on invocation of angels in Sloane MSS. 307 & 3821) were the work of the same author; indeed, the final set of conjurations in the latter work are titles Janua <direction> Reserata.

EDIT: dammit I fail Latin, Janua is fem. sing. not neut. pl.  Fixed.