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.

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.]

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.

On the Invocation of Angels

On the Invocation of Angels: A collection of 17th-century works on Angel Magic.  

Comprising:

• Janua Magica Reserata: invocations of the nine orders of the pseudo-Dionysian celestial hierarchy, with a lengthy theoretical preface mostly cribbed from Agrippa.
• Clavicula Tabularum Enochi: invocations of the angels of Dee & Kelly's Table of the Earth or "Tables of Enoch" based on T&FR and the author's imagination.
• The Operations of the Angles of the Air: conjurations of the Demons Kings of the quarters and their subordinates, deriving from the Solomonic Liber Officiorum tradition; supplemented by related material from Sloane MS. 3824 and the Folger "Book of Magic."
• Celestial Confirmations of Terrestrial Observations: invocations of the planetary archangels, possibly for the purpose of talisman consecration.
• A Select Treatise as it was first discovered to the Egyptian Magi (conjurations of the planetary Intelligences from Book II of De occulta philosophia).
• And, as a "bonus tract," the (as far as I am aware) previously unpublished treasure-hunting conjuration from Sloane 3677 that starts off as a ghost story involving one James Knuckles.

Includes bibliography and nearly 500 remorselessly pedantic footnotes.  Could use further proof reading, polish, and a proper general introduction, but primary key-entry on the main texts is now complete, with certain caveats.  Some of these texts have been typeset before, others to my knowledge haven't been, although the images I was using have been circulating online for a while.

A few months ago I described this as being in "vague wish list" territory owing to issues with my source materials.  I may have over-stated that, and in any case found work-arounds for most of them, although if I ever actually get hold of decent images of the MSS. this will get a working-over.

Lack of progress report 2021.12.25

Primary key-entry on "A Select Treatise" is now done: a draft of this section has been uploaded to Scribd.

I'm now getting more doubtful as to whether this was actually by the author of the Janua Magica Reserata instead of having been written by someone else in imitation of it.  Leaving aside vagaries of spelling in the Sloane 3821 copy, which can be chalked up to the copyist, generally grammar is worse, sentence structure frequently broken and the conjurations have a jarring shift in the tone adopted towards the spirits addressed: the opening refers them as "blessed," "dignified" and "Angelicall," but near the end they are threatened (spelling modernised):

[...] visibly show thyself at this very minute, as you will answer the contrary, being high misdemeanour, at your peril, before Him who shall come to judge the quick and the dead and the world by fire: Fiat, Fiat, Fiat.

... which kind of language is not used in the Janua, Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, "Celestial Confirmations," nor even the "Operations of the Angles of the Air" to the demon kings and their subordinates: it's more normally associated with spirits of dubious or mixed nature or explicitly referred to as "fallen."

EDIT: Actually, a similar phrase, "Come away as you will answer the contrary upon the highest of Misdemeanor, to your principle King and Governor," does appear in the "Tenth Key" of the Janua in Sloane 3825 (fol. 96r), addressed to the glorious, great sacred celestial Angel Substitute Name (assuming that's what the abbreviation used in the MS. means) of the Choir of Blessed Souls: but that "Tenth Key" was not part of the original work (it is in a radically different style to the other nine, the copy in 3825 is in different handwriting and written in, somewhat cramped, on a single page between the original end of the Janua and the start of the next text).  Indeed, the "Tenth Key" is stylistically closer to the conjurations of "A Select Treatise" than either is to the Janua or Clavicula Tabularum Enochi, and both cite Ogim Osi as an apparent divine name, which (at least with that orthography) appears to be otherwise practically unknown (the only Google hits for it in such a context are for (a) pirated copies of Keys to the Gateway of Magic, Skinner & Rankine's typeset of the Janua and (b) a modern ritual for the planetary Intelligences, which itself seems to derive directly or indirectly from "A Select Treatise").

Further, the descriptions of the Intelligences, as well as the texts of the conjurations, make explicit references to technical astrological considerations, implying that they should be called when their planet is "both essentially and accidentally well dignified and fortified," whereas by contrast the planetary invocations of "Celestial Confirmations" simply refer to the planetary "day and hour" system which is largely a dodge for avoiding the hassle of calculating aspects, dignities and the like.

* * *

I would caution people that @dancingstar93 on Twitter is not me, but (a) that handle's owner does not seem to have actually done anything with it since creating the account in 2012 and (b) I doubt anyone who saw their profile and knows me either IRL or online would have made the mistake anyway.

Lack of progress report 2021.12.02

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.

Meddling with the Goëtia again (9)

The more I look at it, the more complicated the stemma of the Mathers-Crowley Goëtia gets.  That is:

1. The original 17th-century redaction depends on the 1665 Robert Turner translation of the Heptameron (and thus the Harley Lemegeton, which was further heavily redacted from the text represented by the Sloane copies, can. not. possibly. derive from the work of someone who died in 1656).  There are two citations in the Heptameron's Exorcismus Spirituum Aërorum that were omitted in Turner's translation, though included in his typeset of the Latin (addressing the spirits as vos qui, vestra culpa, de coelo eiecti fuistis usque ad infernum locum, "you who, for your sin, were cast out of heaven even unto the infernal region" -- and exorcising them per eam quæ Ecclesia Dei nominatur, "by she who is called the Church of God") and were similarly skipped over in the corresponding sections of the second conjuration of the Ars Goëtia, and two instances of sedem ("seat") being rendered "seal," that are perpetuated into the Goëtia, as well as the questionable translation of "nona cohorte" as "in the ninth Legion" in the "Beralanensis" conjuration.  All these points differ, for example, in the other known 17th-century English translation of the Heptameron, (BL Sloane MS. 3851 fol. 61r-74r -- see specifically fol. 64v, 65v).

2. The redactor of the Ars Goëtia (going on the Sloane MS. 3825 version), while perpetuating the aforementioned errors and omissions, besides the major rearrangements (e.g. displacing the concluding section of the Exorcism / Vinculum into "The Constraint," and moving the bulk of the "Beralanensis" conjuration into the first conjuration), freely rephrased citations in the second conjuration and made minor rearrangements in their order.  Other passages remain, barring vagaries of spelling, capitalisation and punctuation, verbatim from Turner.

Since the Vinculum Spirituum was a floating text, extant exemplars of which show a great deal of variation, that was incorporated into the Lucidarium prior to that being turned into the Heptameron, it is of course possible that the redactor of the Goëtia had a variant copy in Latin or English, probably not under that title (else why, as previously remarked, make up something else to meet the demand for the "Spirits' Chain"?): on the other hand, there are no citations in the second conjuration of the Goëtia that are not in the Heptameron version of the Vinculum; there is no mention, for instance, of the great and terrible name Gin which Noah heard and spake and was delivered from the Flood, which appears in other English texts of the period deriving from the Vinculum (Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 14r, 144v; see also Sloane MS. 3847 fol. 14r).

3. Mathers' redaction, while retaining the major rearrangements, reverts some minor rearrangements and is generally phrased much closer to Turner's translation than to the Sloane Lemegeton MSS.  It also has major variations that are not attested by any of the BL Lemegeton MSS. and, in so far as they relate to the general rearrangement of the conjurations between the Heptameron and Ars Goëtia, are not simply derived from Turner; this may have been based on an otherwise unknown Lemegeton text, or may have been invented by Mathers.  For instance, the first conjuration in Sloane MS. 3825 runs as followeth:

I Invocate and conjure you spirit N. & being with power armed from the supreame Majesty I throughly [sic] command you by Beralanensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachiæ & Apologiæ Sedes, and the most powerfull princes, Genio Liachidi ministers of the Tartarean seat, cheeefe princes of <of> the seat of Apologia, in the Ninth Legion; I exorcize & powerfully command you spirit N, in and by him that said the word and it was done; and by all the holy and most glorious names of the most holy and true God,  and by these his most holy names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohe, Zebeoth, Elion, Escerchie, Jah, Tetragrammaton, Saday, that you forthwith appeare and shew yourselves here unto me before this Circle, in a fair and humane shape, without any deformity or ugly shew, and without delay, doe ye come; from all parts of the world to make <make> rationall answeres unto all Things which I shall ask of you, and come yee peaceably visibly and afably without delay, manifesting what I desire, being conjured by the name of the Eternall living and true God, Helioren, I conjure you by the especiall and true name of your God that you are obedient unto and by the name of the King, which beareth rule over you, that forthwith you come without Tarring  and fullfill my desires, and command, and persist unto the End, & according to my Intentions and I conjure you by him by whome all Creatures are obedient and by this ineffable name Tetragrammaton Jehovah, which being heard, the Elements are overthrown, the aire is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of Celestialls, Terrestialls & Infernalls doe tremble, and are troubled and confounded together, that you visibly and affelby speak unto me with a Clear voice Intelligible, and without any ambiguity, therefore come ye in the name Adonai Zebeoth, Adonai Amiorem, com com why stay you hasten Adonay, Saday, the Kinge of kings commandeth you.

The other Sloane Lemegeton texts have only minor variations with this.  Whereas Mathers' text runs:

I do invocate and conjure thee, O Spirit, N., and being with power armed from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by Beralanensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachia, and Apologiæ Sedes; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidæ, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee.  And being armed with power from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient.  Also I, being made after the image of God, endued with power from God, and created according to His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of God, El, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit N.  And I command thee by Him who spake the Word and his Fiat was accomplished, and by all the names of God.  Also be the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Ehohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddäi, Lord God Most High, O thou spirit N., that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity.  [&c., &c., &c. -- see the CP Goëtia for the rest.]

"I, being made after [...] O thou Spirit N," is displaced from the start of the "Exorcism of the Spirits of the Air" and does not appear anywhere in the Sloane 3825 Goëtia.

4. Mathers had access to one or more Lemegeton texts in unspecified private collections.  At least one of these was separate from the Frederick Hockley transmission line (an incomplete exemplar of which is in Wellcome MS. 3203): Mathers gives four versions of the introductory description of the work detailing the separate books, three of which include the Ars Notoria: Hockley's source (which he described as "a MS. in two volumes, about the date of 1680 to 1700") only had the first four "books" (see his copy of the introductory description in Wellcome MS. 4665); and of the four BL Lemegeton MSS., Sloane MS. 2731 omits the Ars Notoria and Harley MS. 6483 omits the outline description.  Hockley's version of the first conjuration is also closer to the Sloane copies than to the Mathers redaction (the copy in Wellcome 3203 omits some phrases, possibly by copyist eye-skip).  The copy which was later acquired by Professor E.M. Butler (who reproduced an illustration from it in her Ritual Magic) also apparently lacked the Ars Notoria (she characterises it as being similar in content to Sloane 2731).

5. Mathers, or someone in an otherwise unknown MS. tradition, while generally modernising spelling and standardising the orthography of names of God of Hebrew origin, introduced archaic English inflectional forms that weren't in the 17th-century versions.

I have uploaded a tabulation of the parallel passages to Scribd.

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 (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:

* * *

* * *

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.

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.